PESHAWAR, June 25: The efforts of the provincial government to hand over hundreds of tubewells to community based organizations is not yielding desired results due to reluctance on the part of communities concerned.

In line with the foreign funded Social Action Programme (SAP) hundreds of tubewells installed in several parts of the province since 1993 were required to be handed over to communities that were to benefit from the facility.

“There are a lot of problems as communities are hesitant to accept tubewells,” said a senior government functionary.

The task to convince the communities has now been assigned to the district governments.

However, the district governments are also finding it difficult to convince the communities.

Sources in the Karak district government told Dawn that out of the 60 SAP-funded tubewells installed in different parts of the district only three had been taken by the community concerned.

High maintenance cost and exorbitant electricity tariff are two of the main concerns that have been discouraging the local communities.

“Villagers simply refuse to accept tubewells for the reason that they do not have the capacity to contribute Rs200 per household every month to pay electricity bills and meet expenditure to maintain tubewells of their area,” said an official of the planning and development department, NWFP.

The on-going tussle between the provincial government and the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) over the issue of excessive billing has also made the district governments’ job much more difficult.