India: Exhausted from searching for water.
(Baonghean.vn) - 42 degrees Celsius in the shade, but this doesn't stop 10-year-old Anjali Patole from lining up daily in front of a water tank in Latur city, India.
Here, the little girl and her parents have to stand under the scorching sun for three hours to collect 150 liters of water in several plastic containers. The tap at their home had run dry three months ago, so they have to fetch water from a public tank every day.
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| Anjali Patole spends the entire summer fetching water. |
Earlier this week, a 12-year-old girl died of heatstroke after spending four hours drawing water from a pump in nearby Beed County. However, residents here have no other choice.
Three years of meager rainfall have plunged 330 million people across 256 districts in India into drought. The water scarcity has led to clashes over public reservoirs, and two people have died of heart attacks in one such incident.
Authorities were forced to issue a ban on large gatherings around water reservoirs last month.
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| Many people lined up all night to get water. |
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| Long lines of people waiting to get water in the countryside. |
The wealthy can afford bottled water for daily use, while the poor are entirely dependent on water from public reservoirs. Spending most of their time at these reservoirs waiting for water has become commonplace over the past eight months.
Authorities claim that 125 water trucks arrive daily to supply residents. At the peak of the drought in February, the city received only a quarter of its daily water needs – 25 million liters.
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| Latur has become the city of water tankers. |
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| The Manjara River, the main water source for Latur, has now dried up. |
Local residents have raised 30 million Rupees (approximately $450,113) to dredge 18 kilometers of the Manjara River, which is now nearly dry. In the long term, Latur will have to devise solutions to better protect and utilize its water resources, and change its farming practices. But before that, they need plenty of rain.
Thanh Hien
(According to BBC)
