Poondi Drinking Water Scheme

Water is one of life’s basic necessities without which we would perish.  Recognizing this fact, the government has worked to provide access to safe drinking water wherever it has been able.  Unfortunately, the focus has generally been on making drinking water available in highly populated areas in order to do the most good.

As a result, small villages and hamlets find themselves far from secure water sources, which has caused the people from these isolated rural areas to become dependent on nearby ponds, lakes or rivers, which are full during the rainy seasons and very nearly dry during the hotter months.  Even full ponds come with dangers as the rains wash in pollutants and germs that can be very harmful to people.  Barring reliance on such nearby water sources, villagers are forced to walk many kilometers to comparatively cleaner sources located in the more populated regions.

In order to address this need for better water sources, CSG initiated a scheme that lasted from 1988 to 1989 to provide protected drinking water (with funding from CAPART, New Delhi) in eleven small villages and hamlets in the Poondi block in the Chingelput district.  The villages were set up with wells and small overhead tanks, which were connected with motor pumps that pushed the water up from the wells to the tanks.

Since CSG did not plan to remain in these communities, the welfare and maintenance of the wells were handed over to the local village panchayats or welfare councils, with active participation from the public for the scheme’s continued success.  In all, CSG was able to bring safe drinking water to 484 families (2,403 people) in their own villages.