Report on the sanitary administration of the Punjab and proceedings of the Sanitary Board for the year ... and the report on sanitary works for.

  • Punjab (India). Sanitary Board.
Date:
[1877]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the sanitary administration of the Punjab and proceedings of the Sanitary Board for the year ... and the report on sanitary works for. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and 13 feet in diameter. It contains 12 feet of water, and has no parapet. Stalks of straw and leaves were observed on the surface of the water. There is one cattle pond here. It is thickly coated with a scum of vegeta¬ tion, below which the water is bright and clear. Cultivation is irrigated by canal water, and is brought close up to the wells on the north and west sides. On the other sides are plantations of peach, plum and other fruit trees. Shddipur.— Population 173 ; contains about 50 mud huts, and 2 or 3 brick houses in two blocks set close together. The inhabitants are Rajputs, Jats, and kamins, all Mussulmans. In appearance they look healthy and in good condition. The water supply is from a single well situated between the two blocks. It is 31 feet deep and 9 feet in diameter, and contains 8 feet of water which is sweet. There are 5 other wells in the fields around. There are two cattle ponds close to the walls. The ground around is excavated, and more or less encumbered with litter and dung heaps. Cultivation is irrigated from canal cuts. Mahmud Buti. —Population 772; contains about 283 mud houses and 15 or 20 brick-built ones, and there are the ruined walls of 40 or 50 other mud huts. The inhabitants are Mussulmans of the Bhatti Rajput and Arain castes, with a few kamin families. The water supply is from wells, of which there are 3 in and about the village, and 32 in the fields around. The well outside the village to the south is 18 feet deep and 5 feet in diameter. It contains 4 feet of water which is sweet, and has a parapet 1 foot high. There are no cattle ponds, but the ground about is very irregular with many drainage channels, and near the village is much excavated into hollows in which water lodges after rain. * The site of the village is somewhat raised above the ground around, and is close to the bank of a wide ravine which formerly formed the channel of the river Ravi. In the rainy season it fills with water, and is liable to overflow, owing to the obstruction of its channel to the southward by the railway line. The land around is poor and inclined to aridity, and here and there are wide patches of gritty waste (kankar) or powdery clay. The cultivation is irrigated by wells. There is no canal water here. The interior of the village is as dirty and untidy as most others of its class, but the ground immediately around it is tolerably free from scattered litter and ordure. This is the last of the villages inspected by the committee. The remainder of those in the north-west section of the five-mile radius area are included within the limits of the Lahore municipality, which covers an area of about 14 square miles, and comprises 13 villages and hamlets besides the city of Lahore, civil station of Anarkulli, aud Donald Town, and the Railway settlement at Naulukha, the whole being under an organized system of conservancy, which is supervised and controlled by the authorities appointed by Government. II, now devolves on the committee, before submitting any suggestions for the improvement of the villages inspected and others included within the five-miles radius, to review briefly the principal physical features and main characters in a hygienic sense of the area occupied by these villages with the object ofdiscovi ring whether in their existing conditions they really do injuriously affect the salubrity of cantonments ; and if so in what manner. And this it seems convenient to do under the heads of topography, cultivation aud sanitation. Topography.—The circular area in the centre of which is situated the cantonment of Meean Meer is a wide open plain on the east or left bank of the river Ravi, which is at a distance of 8 or 10 miles from the cantonment itself. The highest part of this plain is occupied by the cantonment, and is traversed also by the Lahore branch of the Bari Doab Canal, which flows across it from north-east to south-west and touches the cantonment boundary near the vil age of Meean Meer. Between this village and Ganj, both on the left bank of the canal, are the new water-works for supplying the cantonment with pure water distributed in pipes. The surface soil is a stiff impermeable clay, and in many parts, at a few feet below the surface, ^ontain beds of nodular limestone (kankar). In the vicinity of the Lahore civil station the clay is excavated for brick making, and the kankar for burning into lime and for metalling roads. The natural surface drainage of the area is on two lines to the north-west and south-west on either side of the canal alignment, and in each direction it is aided by an artificial cutting leading from cantonments into the natural gully formed by the ancient bed of the river Ravi, and which itself empties into the river. The slope or “fall” for this natural drainage is very slight over the greater portion of the area-under consideration, and consequently, after rain, water lodges on the surface, and in some parts, where the ground lies low, forms wide sheets of very shallow depth, which remain till desiccated by the sun. In the vicinity of villages where the ground has been thoughtlessly excavated for building purposes, the surface drainage collects and forms deep pools, which are in reality thick mixtures of all the surface filth and ordure deposits in 'the village outskirts, and becomes merely collections of stagnant sewage which last a Jong time before finally drying up. On the whole, the surface drainage is free, and there are no permanent swamps or marshes in any part of this area. The depth of the sub-soil water below the surface varies in different parts. In the southern half of the area, as gathered from the measurements of the village wells, it ranges from 32 to 39 feet in the 'tracts at a distance from the canal, and 22 to 30 feet in the vicinity of its course. In the northern half it ranges from 23 to 37 feet in the eastern section, and from 13 to 30 feet in the western, both being freely canal irrigated. The general aspect of the country is barren and waste in the central parts of the area, and fairly well wooded and cultivated in its outskirts. The cantonment of Meean Meer, situated as it is [in the centre of the area] on a clear open plain, is surrounded by a broad belt (from one to three miles wide) of perfectly open and unoccupied ground, and is thus exceptionally favoured in its circumstances of position so far as they afford the protection of isolation against the contagiums or any other extraneous sources of disease communication or infec¬ tion. The ventilation of the entire site is perfect, its area free aud open, and its drainage, though perhaps not 60 perfect and rapid as it might be, is no where obstructed, and does not appear to be seriously defective.