“Milk quality of almost all the cattle including goat, sheep and cows has significantly improved as their milk is now thicker. And, fur of the sheep has turned shiner after they have started consuming the water of the artisan well,” observed camel breeder Qadir Bux.
Most of the dug wells in the surrounding villages of the Tharparkar district are dug as deep as 60-70 metres, but their water being brackish is extremely injurious to health. Therefore, rain water is harvested in small earthen pots with narrow holes for drinking purposes but it hardly lasts for three to four months.
The dry spell in Thar normally extends from the month of December and continues up to May. And during the drought season, most of the villagers of the Tharparkar district temporarily migrate along with their livestock to distant barrage areas and return when it rains.
Destinations are different for the people of various ecological zones. But generally the migratory farm labour from Thar prefers to go to Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Badin, Hyderabad, Sanghar and Nawabshah districts, where they have enough water for their livestock and labour work in farming lands for their livelihood, informed Dr. Khataumal a local development expert of Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP) based in Mithi, district headquarter of the Tharparkar district.
He said that the major source of livelihood for locals in Thar is livestock breeding and rain-fed farming. “Therefore, any outbreak of disease in livestock, which mostly occurs from consumption of contaminated or highly brackish water of the dug wells, leads to their death in huge number. It results in a huge financial loss for the locals,” he remarked.
Sono Khangharani, CEO of TRDP, said that initially, the well was bored as deep as 700 feet but its water was extremely brackish and smelly. It was of no use for livestock or locals. Later, on the insistence of villagers, who believed that underground fresh water is present 1,350 feet deep in the village, we resumed boring further deeper as down as 1,300 deep, using heavy drilling machines at a cost of Rs2.2 million.
“But, when the boring machine struck at 1,300 feet depth, all of a sudden water came gushing out and the villagers, whose hopes were on the verge of waning, burst into jubilation,” he recalled.
Talking about the impact of artisan well’s water quality and its impact on cattle, TRDP’s senior manager for development works, engineer Jhaman, termed the artisan well’s water not fit for human consumption because its’ Parts Per Million (PPM) ratio is around 3,500 while allowable PPM ratio under WHO standards is 500.
“Although locals use this water also for their drinking, it is better to desalinate it to avoid any serious repercussions on human health,” he suggested.
The water of the artisan well is rich in sulphur; that is why, its usage for the livestock has helped reduced their skin diseases,” informed Jhaman Lalchandani.
Recently, an R.O. (water desalination) Plant has been established by the Sindh Coal Authority adjacent to the artisan well, with a capacity of desalinating 50,000 gallon water per day.
Once the R.O. plant starts functioning, the desalination water would usher in a new era of socioeconomic development in the area as it could also be used for agriculture purposes and breeding of healthy livestock, hoped Narumal, a rural development expert in Thar.
