Deccan Chronicle 10.11.2009

Water connections free for city slums

Bengaluru, Nov. 9: The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has taken up a Rs 42 crore project to provide free water connections to households in 362 slums in the core Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) area.

Water will also be supplied to slum-dwellers at a subsidised rate. At present, the BWSSB, under a volumetric metering system, levies a lowest tariff of Rs 6 per kilolitre.

The board has been supplying water to slums through 6,100 public taps and has sunk 6,310 borewells in these areas but, if things go as planned, residents of these localities will not have to queue up with pots on the streets but will be able receive water in their homes by November 2011.

The BWSSB will in the next two weeks float tenders to appoint agencies to survey the slums identified and prepare a detailed project report. Work on the the project, funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), will begin in five months and will be completed in 18 months, said BWSSB chairperson P.B. Ramamurthy.

While the project is part of the BWSSB’s pro-poor initiatives, board officials said it could also help check unaccounted use and wastage of water in the city. Some 43 per cent, or 408 million litres per day (mld), of the water supplied by the BWSSB is not accounted for, due to leaks, old pipes and misuse of water at public taps.

After the project is implemented in the core BBMP area, it will be extended to othe former TMC areas, Mr Ramamurthy added.

The BWSSB has waived the interest on unpaid water bills of over 12,000 households in slums in the city, an official said. Around 10 per cent of Bengaluru’s population lives in over one lakh households in the city’s 780 slums.