Forty-five-year-old Dilmaya Budha from Khanigaun in Bangadkupinde Municipality-3, Salyan used to walk for at least one-and-a-half hours to fetch a vessel of water from the nearest spring.

But these days, she gets water in her own house courtesy of a solar lift drinking water project.

Not only Budha but several families in Khetgara, Khanigaun, Melatakura and Kumtakura settlements in Bangadkupinde-3 have benefitted from the water project.

“Our difficulties have come to an end now. We used to waste so many hours a day collecting water from the spring but now, we get water on our own doorsteps,” said Gauri Pun of Bangadkupinde Municipality Ward-3. “We don’t have to face water shortage even in the dry season.”

The solar lift drinking water project has come into operation with the collaboration of the Constituency Development Fund and the provincial and local governments. JUP Private Limited was awarded the contract for the Rs 37.4 million project.

According to Indra Kumar Pun, a resident of Bangadkupinde, 176 households have benefited from the drinking water project.

“Water from Mula Khola, which is around 500 meters below the settlement, has been lifted to our settlement,” Pun said.

Local residents say the drinking water project has also come as a boon to the village’s children.

“The studies of school children had been affected, as they had to spend hours fetching water from the spring in the past. Many children in our settlement had to miss classes and homeworks,” Pun said. “But with the completion of the water project, the children won’t have to do that anymore and can instead focus more on their studies.”

The residents of Bangadkupinde Ward 3 had been demanding for the water project for the past three decades. But it was only in the last fiscal year that the authorities allocated a budget for the project.

According to Govind Kumar Pun, the mayor of Bangadkupinde Municipality, various settlements in ward 3 were suffering from an acute shortage of water in the past.

“The decades-long water crisis has come to an end now. Several drinking water projects are underway in other places of the local unit as well,” he said.