The Hindu 21.01.2010
Piped water yet to reach 40 per cent of area in capital city
Staff Reporter
A non-governmental organisation conducts study in 60 wards
BHUBANESWAR: Although volume of daily drinking water supply to Bhubaneswar is almost double of the required, more than 40 per cent of area under capital city is yet to be fully covered with pipe water supply.
According to a study carried out by MASS, a non-governmental organisation, out of 60 wards, four are yet to be covered and 23 wards have been partially covered.
The study was presented before authorities of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Public Health Department and other city offices at a workshop organised by Water and Sanitation Programme, South Asia and MASS here recently.
“People living in ward number of 4, 7, 59 and 60 have not yet connected with piped water supply.
In most of the wards such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8, whole population has not been covered with drinking pipe water supply,” said Ranjan Kumar Panda presenting the study here.
He said only about 54,000 out of about 1,50,000 households in Bhubaneswar had domestic connection which implied one third of the households were out of drinking water supply network.
Rest of the households collect water from 578 public stand posts, resort to theft or depend on their own sources.
“Bhubaneswar is among the fastest growing cities of the country.
The population has grown from 40,000 to 9 lakhs in just six decades. Similarly, the area has expanded from 16.5 Sq. km to 135 sq km.
This growth rate poses challenge for any service provider, more so with water service provider,” Mr. Panda said.
Households with tap connections were getting 4,600 litres daily while other households were facing a lot of hardship that implied that there were greater geographical and other inequalities with regard to supply and access to water, he said.
Tough challenge
The study says Public Health Engineering Department faces tough challenge to ensure uninterrupted pure drinking water supply since almost all water pipes were laid in 1950 and 1960.
“Moreover, seven water chlorination points were built in 1954, 1960, 1968, 1974, 1975, 1987 and 1996. That means all purification centres needed to be upgraded,” it point out. The challenge gets complicated with mushrooming of slums and fast expansion of the city. The city is having about 300 slums inhabited by about 2 lakh dwellers.
Reacting to the situation BMC Commissioner Gadadhar Parida said, “although drinking water does not come under corporation’s jurisdiction, we are equally concerned about rational supply of quality and quantity of drinking water to all denizens.”
