PESHAWAR, July 5: At least 500 families in Pakhi Balla, a remote area in the Frontier Region of Peshawar are facing a drought-like situation.

Wells have dried up in the area due to the receding water table. As a result of a prolonged dry spell, small reservoirs constructed by local people to store rainwater have also gone dry.

Women of the area have to fetch water in pitchers and on donkeys from a well in the Paridu area, about six kilometres west of Pakhi Balla.

“Paridu is the nearest point from where women fetch water for drinking, washing and meeting other needs,” said Zulfiqar Khan, a resident of Pakhi Balla, adding that people of the area took bath after 10 or 12 days due to water shortage.

This backward part of the Frontier Region has no regular drinking water supply scheme. The area also lacks other basic amenities.

Recently, the directorate of education approved to upgrade a primary school in the area to middle level but teaching staff has not been provided to it.

The NWFP governor’s Fata secretariat had allocated more than Rs50 million for five drinking water supply schemes in last year’ Annual Development Programme for Fata but the area is still deprived of the basic facility.

Four years ago, local people said, officials had conducted a survey of the area and started digging a well but left the project incomplete.

Area people told Dawn wild animals and birds had migrated from the area due to acute water shortage. Many people have soled their cattle.

A few days ago, a leopard fell in a dry water reservoir in search of water. People of the area informed officials of the NWFP wildlife department to rescue the wounded leopard.

Residents of Pakhi Balla had laid a pipeline from a spring in Pakhi Baba a few years ago but the pipeline was removed after inhabitants of Pakhi Baba developed a dispute with the people of Pakhi Balla over distribution of water.

Ayub Khan, SDO of the public health engineering, FR, said a scheme had been approved in 2005-06 under the ADP to provide water to Pakhi Balla from the disputed spring and the government had sanctioned Rs10.724 million for the project.