The hopes of people of getting 24×7 drinking water supply has
remained a distant dream. For, the work, which was taken up in January
2015 and was expected to be completed in July 2017, is still making slow
progress.

The work was taken up under the North Karnataka Urban
Sector Improvement Project (NKUSIP) at an estimated cost of Rs. 136
crore — Rs. 68.77 crore for the project and Rs. 67.33 crore for
operation, maintenance and management services for a period of five
years. The agreement was to relay 280.5 km pipeline for internal
distribution, installation of meters, construction of new overhead tanks
wherever necessary and providing connectivity to existing overhead
tanks, covering all the 35 wards. Subsequently, keeping in view the
growth of the city and also the population, the agreement was revised to
lay 464.58 km pipeline leading to an increase in cost by Rs. 21.78
crore.

Though the city had huge impounding reservoirs with
adequate source of water (Tungabhadra canals), the supply of drinking
water has been very erratic. This was attributed to the age-old internal
distribution pipelines and to overcome this, the new project was
proposed.

Accordingly, the executing agency procured material and
laid pipelines covering 312 km and conducted hydro test for about 250
km. Service connection was given to 24,000 houses as against 44,955
houses. At present, there are 69,159 house connections in the city.

But
the progress of work has been very slow forcing the city corporation to
issue notices and also extend the time to complete the works by April
2018.

But NPML Infra Ltd., which is executing the work, has failed
to respond to the notices, though liquidity damage of Rs. 1.24 crore
has been levied.

“To ensure that the work was completed, the
agency was given one more extension of time till December 2018 but to no
avail. Taking a serious view of the laxity on the part of the agency,
the general body of the city corporation has decided to blacklist the
agency and invite fresh tenders for completing the works,” sources have
told
The Hindu
.