Water crisis at peak, no respite in sight

CHANDIGARH: How will Chandigarh become a smart city if its residents continue to struggle for the availability of basic resources like water? The residents living on the upper floors in various sectors of the city are facing a water crisis from the past four days now. Those inflicted with the crisis include residents of sectors 22, 48, 50, 51 and Indira Colony.
Residents of Sector 48 complained that since the last Friday, those residing on the first and second floors have been left to their own means to arrange for their water requirements in the absence of water supply to their houses.
Balwinder Cheema, president of the RWA of Kendriya Vihar of Sector 48, said, “As per the official records, there is some repair work going on at Kajauli water works due to which the residents have been facing the water crisis. From the last Friday, none of the residents living on the first and second floors have received water supply.” He added that every morning they are forced to fetch water from the ground floor in buckets to meet their day-to-day requirements.
Deepti Gupta, another resident of Sector 48, said that from the past one week, the residents are getting their water bottles filled from a single tap located on ground floor of the society. She said, “Summers have just started, and the authorities instead of making proper arrangments for availablity of water are insetad tackling with repair work of pipelines.” She added that during summer holidays, the water requirements will be greater than before. How will the authorities be able to meet the needs now, she questions.
Rajender Mohan Kasyhap, president of resident welfare association of Sector 22, said, “It seems that the Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) is working with labour work force which use traditional ways of repairing the broken water pipeline.” He said that the methods used are seemingly insufficient for a developing and modern city like Chandigarh. MC is not having the required funds to purchase the latest machinery to fulfill essential requirements of the city residents like water supply. It was also added that the area councillor is also helpless in resolving the issue.
Girish Kapoor, president of the RWA of Sector 22, said they are aware of the reason behind water shortage after being updated by the authorities on the same. However, he said, that does not help their cause. He said he would wait for a day and then approach the concerned authorities to ascertain by when will the water shortage end.
Chandigarh MC, superintendent engineer (Public Health) is sending messages to the RWAs that due to the sudden breakdown of pipe line near water works, Sector 39, there will be less pumping of raw water from Kajauli on May 16 and 17, 2018 up to 10am during its emergent repair. Due to this the water supply in the city will be at low pressure in the morning and evening hours of May 17. But the situation is still same in few of the sectors, even a day later.