Until a month ago, Dhanmaya BK, 61, of Chyanchul village in Ghiring Rural Municipality-5 had to wake up before dawn and walk for a kilometre to fetch water. It took her well over two hours to bring home one jar of water.

But these days, Dhanmaya receives water from a tap in her courtyard courtesy of the ‘one house, one tap’ campaign launched by Ghiring Rural Municipality.

“I spent most of my life worrying about how to manage water for my family. With the initiation of the campaign, my daughters and daughters-in-law won’t have to face a similar ordeal,” said Dhanmaya.

There used to be an acute shortage of water in Chyanchul settlement, which lies at an altitude of around 1,500 metres above sea level. The villagers, mainly women, faced a difficult time fetching water from springs and wells.

“The local women are relieved now that the rural municipality has supplied pipe water to each household in the settlement,” said Saraswati Ghimire, the vice-chairperson of Ghiring.

The 42 households in the village are elated after the local unit installed a tap in each house and started supplying water through the Alaichi Drinking Water Lifting Project.

“All the villagers would flock to the well to fetch water and we would have to wait for a long time to get our turn. Now each household in the village gets water at their doorstep,” said Dilu Thapa, a local resident. “Besides drinking and cooking, we can use the supplied water for sanitation purposes, irrigating our kitchen garden and feeding our domesticated animals.”

The rural municipality in the current fiscal year has prioritised drinking water supply projects keeping in view the acute shortage of water in various settlements.

“The rural municipality plans to supply drinking water to each household. ‘One house, one tap’ campaign has already reached 1,700 houses in the local unit. Efforts are underway to install taps and supply water to 450 remaining houses,” said Rana Bahadur Rana, the chairman of the local unit.

According to him, Ghiring Rural Municipality launched the ‘one house, one tap’ campaign with the support of the Gandaki provincial government and the Local Infrastructure Partnership Programme.

“Several drinking water projects are underway with an objective to supply drinking water to each household in the local unit,” said Rana.

The Energy, Water Resource and Drinking Water Ministry of Gandaki Province has provided a budget of Rs 106 million for the campaign.

“Five drinking water projects are in the pipeline with the budget provided by the provincial ministry. These projects should be completed by the end of the current fiscal year,” said Bamdev Paudel, an engineer at the Drinking Water and Sanitation Division Office in Tanahun. According to him, once completed, these projects will benefit around 597 households in the local unit.