The 40,000-odd population of Manapparai municipality, facing untold hardship to get drinking water for months together, can at last heave a sigh of relief.

Chief Minister Jayalalithaa according immediate attention to the representation of District Collector Jayashree Muralidharan in this regard has sanctioned funds for sinking another borewell on the banks of the Cauvery immediately.

Before 1994, the people of this region used to scrounge for water and collect it even from the trains passing through the Manapparai station, recalls L. S. Kannaiyan, chairman of the municipality from 2001-06.

When a combined drinking water scheme was inaugurated by current Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in 1994, the then population of the municipality numbering 25,000 started getting daily supply.

The scheme costing Rs. 43 crore helped supply 40 litres per capita a day in Manapparai and it benefited 50 wayside villages too. The Cauvery-based scheme has a collector well at Manathattai, near Kulithalai, and water is brought through pipelines from a distance of 40 km to Manapparai.

According to V. P. Shankar, former councillor, with power disruptions becoming ubiquitous, the water supply during 2012 started dwindling and the 27 wards in the municipality with 6,000 domestic connections and a number of public fountains could get supply only once a week.

Shantha Veerachamy, chairperson of the municipality, has been pleading for another collector well as the yield from the existing one was dwindling.

Besides, R.V.S. Veeramani, another former councillor, has sought a separate feeder line to make the drinking water scheme really effective.

To a petition filed under the Right to Information Act, P. Ekambaram, Managing Director, Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage Board (TWAD), has communicated to Mr. Shankar that as against the pumping time of 20 hours a day, now the pumping has been resorted to 23 hours because the efficiency of the pumpsets has come down as they are 18 years old. Similarly, the yield of the collector well at Manathattai has also dwindled.

At present the scheme gets 16 hour power supply, he said.

Considering the future requirements, one more collector well has been sanctioned and the works have been taken up at a total cost of Rs. 50 lakh, he added.

As per 2011 census, the municipality has a population of 40,178 and its requirement per day is 3.81 million litres. Under the Manathattai scheme two million litres a day is supplied to Manapparai municipality while one million litres a day is supplied to the municipal residents from local sources.

The Managing Director said that all the nine overhead tanks in the municipality are getting alternate day Cauvery water supply.

He was confident that from February onwards, it would be possible to supply 3.61 million litres a day to Manapparai municipality if the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation were to ensure power supply without any disruption.

However, Mr. Kannaiyan contends that most of the OHTs in the municipality received water supply during March only half a dozen times as against the alternate day supply promised by TWAD.

Citing the recommendation of District Collector that Manapparai drinking water scheme needs “source augmentation ” to mitigate the drought situation, V. Mokkai, Superintending Engineer, Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage Board, Tiruchi-Pudukkottai Circle, on February 19, directed the Executive Engineer, TWAD, Maintenance Division, Tiruchi, that the work for a new collector well “should be taken up and completed at the earliest”.

He has also given a technical sanction for Rs. 34.37 lakh for the work.

Now TWAD has begun the works for sinking the new borewell.

The chairperson of the municipality is happy that at last the residents would be able to get substantially more drinking water once the current works are completed.