Kupwara: Imagine living in a world with little or no light when the sun sets. That’s the plight of an estimated 10,000 villagers in Kupwara district.
They’re not left completely in the dark. Kerosene lamps provide light. Timber provides fuel for cooking.
Manigah-comprising of 8 villages with a population of 10,000 people barely 8 kilometers from the district headquarters faces numerous other problems like drinking water, dilapidated roads, absence of health centres and educational institutions.
But gravest of them all is electricity. The villages have not seen electricity so far. There are no electric poles in the area. We are living without electricity and there has been no progress on the ground despite repeated assurances given to us by local legislator during 2014 election campaign, the residents said.
During election campaign on the directions of locals MLA the officials from Power Development Department brought a power transformer that was kept in Manigah to give us an impression that our villages will be electrified. But as the election was over, the PDD officials took away that transformer back to their office, said Ali Muhammad an elderly resident. The people in power make misleading and false promises to take our votes. Besides physical suffering we undergo psychological trauma as well.
Roads and water supply are the lifeline of any village and town. Manigah area has neither of the two. Since we dont have any approaching road in the village, we had to unload all the material ahead of the nallah and take it from there manually.
Health care facilities are located several kilometers away. In case of emergencies, locals carry the patient on their shoulders. Crossing strenuous paths of hills and forests to reach hospitals located in the district adds to the gravity of the medical crises.
Similar is the case of education. In Manigah, Haihama villages. Parents do not send their children to schools as with the meager income that they earn they could only provide either food or education.
Cattle grazing are our main occupation as we lack all the basic amenities of life. We are still living in Dark Age, the locals rued. They said that some children who are keen to study are forced to use candles to prepare for their exams. The government should listen to our woes and provide us with electricity at least.
A civil society member from frontier district said that they have every reason to believe that the remote villages of frontier district of Kupwara are deprived of all the basic facilities.
Local legislator Abdul Haq Khan, who is also the Rural Development Minister refuted the allegations that any power transformer was provided to these villages. He however admitted that these villages lack electrification and said that all these villages will be electrified under Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) in 2016.
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