The Times of India                   31.11.2010

MC to register private plumbers

LUDHIANA: The Municipal Corporation's failure to keep a check on the practice of illegal water connections has led to its decision to start registration of private plumbers to maintain records. The plumbers would have to submit the number of connections they provided in the city.

According to a ballpen estimate, there are over 3.50-lakh water connections in the city but of these over one-lakh have been given in an unauthorized way.

Residents, especially in the outer wards, hire private plumbers and take water connections from anywhere. And when the problem of mixing of drinking water with sewerage appears, they do not care for its repair and residents also have to drink contaminated water.

MC officials had started regularizing the illegal water connections but it could hardly bring desired results so the officials have now decided to handle it. In the city, there is no record of total number of plumbers and most residents hardly take MC permission before taking water connections.

Giving information, XEN operation and maintenance (O&M) Manjit Singh said that they were going to advertise through media that plumbers could come and register themselves with the MC. He said that with the registration they could easily trace the number of the connections through these plumbers.