Pulwama, June 26: Flash floods caused by heavy rains during intervening night of June 25 and 26 submerged a large swath of paddy fields at two villages in Pampore Tehsil of South Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
Local residents informed Rising Kashmir that flash floods caused by heavy rains damaged standing paddy crops in Wuyan and Munpora villages of Pampore area.
Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, a resident of Munpora, said that a stream is running through the area which has been cloaked and encroached at many points.
He said that the stream couldn’t hold the runoff of rainwater and breached at many places triggering the flash floods.
“Around 600 kanals of paddy fields have been affected,” he said.
The residents said that they requested administration for de-silting of the stream a number of times so that it can hold maximum discharge of rain water.
They said the irrigation and flood control department cut down trees along its embankments some eight years ago for improving its restoring capacity but till date nothing has been done.
The residents said that without increasing water holding capacity of the stream they have apprehensions of facing damages in future too.
In July of last year a similar flash flood had caused significant damage to agriculture crops in Munpora and damaged a portion of a road in neighbouring Nagandar village.
Mohammad Amin, a local of Wuyan, said flash floods have hit 20 kanals of his paddy land.
“We frequently face these floods due to cloud bursts in the upper reaches of Khrew and Shaar Shali area,” he said, adding that because of the floods all their hard work goes into the drain.
Assistant Executive Engineer, Flood Control Department, Pampore, said that a detailed project report has already been approved for the stream ( Khrew Nallah).
“ We will start work on the project in September or October of this year after harvest of paddy crops,” he said, adding that they need to divert the stream for which support of farmers is an essential condition.
He told that they would have executed the project earlier but there was hardly any cooperation from farmers
