Thanala in Bhaderwah–A model village with no basic facilities
Doda, December 6
Declared a Model Village in 2006 to provide it all basic facilities, Thanala village in Sub-Division Bhaderwah in mountainous Doda district sans all basic facilities as claimed.
Thanala is the last village located on Bhaderwah-Chamba road in Jammu and Kashmir lacking all basic facilities a model village should have such as potable drinking water, electricity, toilet facilities and healthcare. Ironically villagers not even have road connectivity and they have to walk half an hour to reach their homes.
Sarpanch, Thanal, Sartaz Ahmed said, “we have more than 400 houses in the village, but hardly 100 houses have toilet facilities. High School in the village has more than 300 girls and boys enrolled have no toilet or drinking water facilities, even staff members have to face immense hardships.”
“The supply lines and transformer are decade old, wooden poles at most places are damaged, wires passing along trees are a serious threat to lives of people living here because during monsoons trees get uprooted and there is total breakdown of transmission system,” he said.
Sartaz said, “due to very low voltage, the students of the area are not able to study properly as they are completely dependent on the light of firewood or kerosene lamps in the night to prepare for their exams.”
“The village has more than 40 year old rusted and damaged water supply lines which need to be replace, replacement of wooden poles to iron, two new transformers and setting up of a modern dispensary as there is no doctor available at time of need,” he demanded.
“On the day it was inaugurated as model village, we were jubilant and had hoped that place will get all the modern facilities, but after ten years there is nothing on ground, now we feeling cheated,” Asgar Ali a local villager said.
To aim of stopping migration of people from rural areas to urban hubs, model village concept has failed to take off properly across the length and breadth of State. The so called model villages do exist on papers but are nowhere on ground.
