Tiwari blames AAP for water crisis in Delhi slums

New Delhi, Jan 10 (IANS) Delhi BJP leader Manoj Tiwari on Tuesday attacked the Delhi government over the water crisis in the slums of the city and said it has failed to fulfil its poll promise.

"Like at Inderpuri and Nangloi slum clusters, in Sanjay Camp too the borewell installed for supplying water was not working," the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Delhi unit Chief Tiwari said after spending a night in the slums of Sanjay Basti in Chanakyapuri area on Monday.

"I was shocked to see that due to water shortage women and children have to risk their lives by going across the railway lines towards Moti Bagh to get drinking water," he said explaining their hardships.

Tiwari, after taking over as the BJP's Delhi unit Chief, has thrice spent the night in slums of the city to do a reality check on the works of the Delhi government.

"Women here too complained of water shortage, lack of toilets and bathrooms," the BJP MP from northeast Delhi said.

Explaining the condition of the mobile toilets in the area, Tiwari said: "The mobile toilets stationed around the camp were too dirty for human use, thus forcing the residents to urinate or defecate in open around under-construction Danish embassy."

"The existence of such pathetic conditions at Sanjay slum camp located in between the diplomatic avenue speaks volumes on incompetence of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board of the city government," Tiwari alleged.

Attacking the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led city government and the Congress which ruled Delhi earlier, Tiwari said, "It is sad that both the Congress and the AAP have treated jhuggi dwellers as vote bank but not made any effort to bring some relief to their lives."

Tiwari also alleged that the elderly citizens of the area complained that there was total lack of health services in the vicinity.

"Mobile dispensaries visit them hardly twice a month and Mohalla Clinics continue to be a distant dream forcing them to rush to Safdarjung Hospital even for minor sickness," he added.

He also said that he has no magic wand to change things overnight but is visiting Jhuggi clusters across Delhi to highlight their problems and force Arvind Kejriwal government to find speedy solutions.