Over three weeks after moving into Swabhiman Apartments in north-west Delhi’s Ashok Vihar, built as part of an in situ slum rehabilitation project for those living in illegal slum clusters razed following court orders, Phoolchand, 64, a migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh, started experiencing itchiness and rashes.
“A doctor told me that the ailment might be due to the water I am using,” Mr. Phoolchand said, adding that the symptoms disappeared days after he shifted to using bottled water for drinking and sourced piped water for bathing from a pipeline near the slum cluster where they used to live. “What we get at the apartment is hard water, and we have stopped using it,” he said.
Many apartment residents also complained about several sewer pipelines in their buildings not yet being connected to the main drainage network. Of the 14 lifts in the society, the residents added, only a few are functional, and the ground floors flood whenever it rains because the proper channel for water dispersal is missing.
The flats were built by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) under the Centre’s ‘Jahan Jhuggi Wahan Makaan’ scheme and were inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 3 this year ahead of the Delhi Assembly poll.
