Migrants in slums travel miles to fetch water, regret not leaving for home

As many pumping stations and factories have closed because of the lockdown, locating new sources of water and persuading the guards or workers to give them some have become daily chores.

For nine-year-old Sunil and his younger sister, two of the many slum dwellers in the city, the day begins with a bicycle ride to find water and fetch as much as they can carry. Entirely dependent on the mercy of the security guards of factories, who may or may not give them some from the bore wells on the premises, the siblings know that they can’t give up despite being turned away repeatedly. Meanwhile, their parents, migrant labourers from Mahoba district, also go scouting for water like thousands of others and try to cover as much area as they can.

With work stalled because of the lockdown, managing enough water for drinking, cooking and cleaning has become a privilege for these migrants. (Amal KS/HT file photo)

“We try to avoid the crowds as the entire basti goes to fetch water and the security guards refuse to give us any if we’re part of a large crowd. There is a pumping station near Sector 66, about 2km from our basti, and some temples in Sector 62 and Mamura where we can get water from. We manage to carry two buckets on our cycle,” Sunil, who lives in a slum in Sector 67, says. He adds that the farthest he and his sister Guddi have travelled to fetch water is Garhi Chaukhandi — a distance of eight kilometres (back and forth).

“The best time to fetch water is when people in factories are bathing or watering plants because the motors are already switched on,” says seven-year-old Guddi, who understands that going back without water is not an option.

As many pumping stations and factories have closed because of the lockdown, locating new sources of water and persuading the guards or workers to give them some have become daily chores.

With the soaring heat, the demand for water has increased and because of zero supply in the illegal slums in Noida’s industrial sectors, water has become a rare commodity for stranded labours, who now regret that they did not leave for their villages when they had a chance.

“The biggest issue is water scarcity. We get food twice a day, sometimes once a day. Even if we don’t, we can still manage without food, but not water. A truck supplies 20-litre water bottles which cost us ₹25 each; but with the days becoming warmer, even two bottles a day are not enough and that costs us a lot. So we have to fetch water from wherever we can. If the water seems dirty, we boil it,” says Kumari Saraswati, another migrant from a slum in Sector 68, who hails from the town of Tilaiya Parma in Koderma, Jharkhand.

“We called the helpline, but they said that they could only provide us food and gave us another number to call,” she adds.

With work stalled because of the lockdown, managing enough water for drinking, cooking and cleaning has become a privilege for these migrants.

“We have lived here for over five years and never seen such water scarcity. We are daily wage labourers and cannot afford to spend ₹50 or ₹70 per day on drinking water. We have no way to earn, and even if we buy drinking water, we still have to go several kilometres to fetch water for cleaning and bathing,” says Vineeta Yadav, a stranded labourer who belongs to Mahoba district.

Thousands of families who didn’t leave, expecting that the lockdown would end soon, now regret their decision.

“We should have left when there was time. At least back in the village, there is no water crisis and we could’ve managed food too. No one from the government has ever come to take heed of our circumstances. The only government official we can complain to is the police and everyone fears them. The basti is dirty, but we have to live here, anyway. If our children don’t bathe every day or drink dirty water, they fall sick. It looks like if this virus doesn’t kill us, the water scarcity will,” says Parvati Devi, a migrant worker from Khagaria district, who lives in a Sector 66 slum along with her husband and three children.

According to officials, since the slums are illegally constructed, they cannot provide proper water connection; however, they say they could manage to supply water in tankers in such a crisis.

“The authority has enough water, but we cannot provide proper connections in such slums or illegal constructions. However, in such a crisis, the best we can do is send a few tankers to those slums if we get complaints,” BM Pokhariyal, deputy general manager, Noida authority, says.