At the two-day special BBMP council session on water, Mayor S K Nataraj and BWSSB Chairman P B Ramamurthy made a slew of announcements to address the water crisis in Bengaluru. These include both short-term and long-term measures to improve infrastructure and ensure water supply to all.
Here are announcements made by the BWSSB:
- 111 Assistant Executive Engineers (AEE) are being recruited. The process will be completed in the next 15 days
- 193 valve men are being recruited. This will also be completed in the next two weeks
- 78 sanitary workers will be recruited. The BWSSB has only 136 sanitary workers currently, apart from those who are from private agencies. A total of 1045 workers are required
- Monthly meetings with AEEs and meetings with Executive Engineers (EEs) once in three months
- Checking unauthorised connections and bringing the guilty to book under a recent amendment to the law
- The deadline to mandatorily install rainwater harvesting systems is being extended by two or three months. The exact date will be notified in a day or two
- Of the 3000 km of pipelines to be laid for Cauvery water supply, only 164 km is yet to be laid. This will be completed by September 2010. With this the infrastructure will be ready to receive water from Cauvery IV stage II phase towards the end of 2011 or early 2012
- Over 24 separate works will be taken up for underground drainage system. Tenders have been awarded for 17 works
- 218 electronic flow meters will be procured to check for leakages
- 30 jetting machines will be added to the existing 46. There is a demand to have one jetting machine in each of the 106 service stations
- Massive desilting is carried out every Tuesday in different areas. This will be continued
- A 24/7 call centre will be set up within the next one month to register consumer grievances and attend to them
- Three borewells to be drilled in each new BBMP ward and two borewells in the old wards
Announcements made by Mayor Nataraj:
- Four borewells to be drilled in new wards and two each in old wards
- Underground drainage system and drinking water supply will be ensured in slums
- Lakes to be developed at a cost of Rs 300 crores
- All government buildings and parks should mandatorily have rainwater harvesting systems in place
- Action will be taken against BWSSB officials who take bribes to install illegal connections
BJP’s B S Sathyanarayana, corporator of Basavanagudi (Ward 154), also made an announcement that a request will be sent to the state government to provide an additional 30 TMC (Thousand Million Cubic) of water, which will in turn be forwarded to the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal. ⊕
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The mayor wants to request another 30 TMC of water from the Cauvery? Our current allocation is 19 TMC from the Cauvery Tribunal. Good luck with that!
Why don’t they emphasize the fundamentals and talk practically.
-Fix the leaky infrastructure
-Provide proper sewage lines that don’t drain into our lakes
-Build sewage treatment plants
– Prevent encroachment and garbage dumping in our lakes and storm water drains (Rajakaluves)
-Provide incentives /disincentives as appropriate to people who sump sewage in storm water drains
-Change the billing rates to reflect true cost
-Rain water harvesting
-Legislation and appropriate hiring in the BWSSB to manage ground water
-A focus on equitable supply of water to the poor (provide water, make them pay at a reasonable rate)
The action program by the Authority and the Mayor appear reasonable enough. What appears to be missing is leadership in addressing a basic need in a major metropolis.
Mr. Vijayaraghavan in his suggestions hits the nail right on the head. Many of his suggestions can be implemented immediately without waiting for hiring a large number of new staff. Would the Authority entertain retaining people like Vijayaraghavan as volunteer consultants and expedite implementation of doable things right away?
It is sad to see a major city in such a pretty pass.
Ms Vittal has to be commended for three very informative stories on the challenge of water supply in Bengaluru. Good for CM to have assigned a good reporter to the task.