Ratacherra reeling under acute water shortage, pins hope on JJM

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaDecember 31, 2021

Residents of Ratacherra village in East Jaintia Hills District have been facing acute water shortage in recent times after a water supply scheme could not be implemented due to land issue. 

Headman of the village Desous Pohshna informed that the villagers have to buy water for the past many months to meet their daily requirement. 

He said in 2016-17, the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department had sanctioned a water supply scheme at Rs 29 crore. 

Though the source is from Ratacherra, the scheme however will cover over 12 villages, he added.

Pohshna informed that initially majority of the people have expressed their willingness to give land for the implementation of the scheme.

This was after the PHE department had maintained that if the villagers are willing to give land free of cost for laying of the pipes, they will immediately approve and implement the scheme. 

He said the dorbar shnong was quite happy by the decision of the department in order to address the problem of drinking water supply faced by the people of the area.

“However when everything seemed to go smoothly and even the minister and the chief engineer of PHE had also laid the foundation stone, some misunderstanding suddenly came up as due to the greed of some of the people, the scheme could not be taken up,” the headman saiid. 

“Some of the people from the village have opposed the construction of a road. When the work was almost half done and on reaching their land, they expressed that they are not ready to give their land without paying any compensation,” he added.

Pohshna said that such people were being misled by some vested interest to disrupt the proposed implementation of the water supply scheme, which could have benefited the entire village. 

“The issue had also led to division among the residents of the village. Since they have land holding certificates they also went to court. The court as per land compensation stated that government has to pay land compensation. 

But the department has maintained that it cannot pay land compensation as the scheme was approved based on the request of the villagers and on condition that they should provide land free of cost. The matter is still lying pending before the court,”  he stated.

Ratacherra has a total of 287 households with over 2,228 population. 

When asked, the headman informed that the dorbar shnong had approached the department for implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission in the village. 

“The department has already surveyed the source of the water and now it is under process. We hope that this will be approved so that it will ease the problem of shortage of water supplly,” he said.

According to him, implementation of the JJM will to a great extent help in addressing the problems of the villagers. 

He also added that the dorbar shnong had to take out funds of the village to repair an old water supply scheme for repairing the damaged pipelines to ease the problem. 

Established in 1951, Ratacherra is also one of the twelve areas of difference shared between Meghalaya and Assam.