Residents of Sahare village in Gurbhakot Municipality have to walk for hours to fetch water every day, as there are no drinking water sources near the settlement.

Over the years, the locals have repeatedly notified the authorities of the problem, but they have not received any response, according to Dev Bahadur BK, a local.

“Even though budgets were allocated to build drinking water projects in the settlement, they never materialised because of the dishonesty of the consumers’ committee,” BK said.

But that is likely to change soon, as the municipality recently inaugurated a new water project—Subhaghat Drinking Water Project—with a budget of Rs620million.

According to project chief Purna Prasad Upadhyay, the project will pump water upstream from Bheri River. Even though the project was recently inaugurated, its contract was signed in July 2019. Upadhyay added that the project will be completed in two years and will benefit about 17,000 people from the four wards in Gurbhakot Municipality.

Meanwhile, another project is afoot in Birendranagar, Surkhet’s headquarters, which also reels under a drinking water shortage.

The Surkhet Valley Drinking Water Consumers’ Committee is overseeing the project. Balaram Tiwari, an engineer involved with the project, said the project would kick off in March.

The department of drinking water, which is under the federal government, has allocated a total of Rs40million budget for the project. The project aims to ‘pump’ water from the Bheri River at a speed of 390litre per second to the Surkhet Valley.

Birendranagar, which is also the capital of Karnali Province, currently lacks an average of 20litres of water per person during the rainy season and 69litres in winter.