TIRUCHY: Residents from Ariyalur on Friday commenced the desilting works of a 70-year-old village well that was the main source of drinking water by crowd funding.

There are around 1,000 families residing in and around the Sooriya Manal village near Jayankondam in Ariyalur district and they had dug a well around 70 years ago and over 10 villages adjacent to the village have been utilising the well for drawing drinking water.

Since the water was clean, the people from far off places were too used to drawing water from the well.

However, the well was not desilted ever since it was dug and so there was silt accumulation and in the due course of time, the villagers found the water has lost its quality.

So, the villagers approached the officials to desilt the well, but their repeated demands went unheard.

In such a backdrop, the residents who held a meeting recently decided to desilt the well without depending on the government.

Subsequently, they crowdfunded and commenced deslit works.

On Friday, the residents gathered along with the workers and started desilting the well with proper safety measures.

“Due to the silt accumulation, the water veins were blocked and so the quality and the quantity of water was too poor and so we approached the officials but in vain. Still, without waiting for their support, we commenced the work by collecting funds among ourselves and it yielded fruit,” Velusamy, one of the coordinators of the work said.