Shortage of drinking water in Gelegphu town has forced some hoteliers to temporarily stop room services and some to reduce the number of rooms for almost a week now.
“We receive less supply in the morning and stored it and operate our business, our room service has been stopped for almost a week now in absence of water supply,” Mohan Sani, a hotelier, said.
The Gelegphu Central Regional Referral hospital (CRRH) is also affected but started receiving water from yesterday. However, Officiating Medical Superintendent said interruption of water supply hindered them from providing medical services. They are not able to carry out basic things like maintaining the cleanliness in the hospital. Infection control for inpatients is also compromised.
“Without water, air conditioner in adult ICU, maternity unit and dialysis centres do not function because that have water cooling system and in few places like CT scan and emergency department we have gas cooling system which functions but in other units such as dialysis and adult ICU we are facing difficulty in maintaining the air temperature of the room. That might give problem such as maintenance humidity. Room humidity shoots up to more than 85 plus which is supposed to be less than 65 to maintain the quality of drugs and the equipment,” Nar Bahadur Rai, the Officiating Medical Superintendent, said.
Gelegphu Thrompon said it is not a chronic problem, because they release water in timely basis. And at present, they could not supply continuously because Thromde is initiating construction of infiltration tank. He said with completion of this new infrastructure it would help to resolve the present issue.
“There isn’t much crisis in the fair weather and it is only during flood or when there is heavy rainfall and when there is lightning. Everybody knows Gelegphu’s atmosphere, climate or weather. In summer it is very erratic. Lightning will be there, lot of floods will be there and sometime interruption in water supply is obvious, it happens. So thromde administration takes to repair, till that period of time, I think they should store water to use,” Tika Ram Kafley, Gelegphu Thrompon, said.
Gelegphu Thromde caters drinking water supply to core town of Gelegphu from Mao river water treatment plan.
