Old water supply system leaves city high, dry

Sumit Hakhoo

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 23

Residential colonies in Jammu continue to get drinking water supply from old and rusted pipes that were laid decades ago. With the pipes having exceeded their original design life, the government is paying no attention to replace and overhaul the existing infrastructure.

Although the non-revenue water loss is a major reason for scarcity, priority for the planners remains to increase production capacity. However, funds are not being allocated to revamp the over 50-year-old distribution network.

Jammu, once the seat of Dogra power, got its first organised water supply in 1934 when then Maharaja Hari Singh built a water treatment plant at Panjtirthi. It was expanded between 1950 and 1960 as the city grew due to influx of refugees.

About 35 per cent of water is daily wasted during the distribution. This was admitted by a study conducted by independent consultants. It is also giving rise to water-borne diseases as pipes criss-cross sewerage lines in several areas.

The consultants had recommended overhauling the existing infrastructure within the core city area where 7 lakh inhabitants live in 71 municipal wards but nothing much has been done.

A ‘rehabilitation programme’ undertaken through Asian Development Bank (ADB) assistance was also left midway. The plan envisaged plugging of leakages in the distribution system by laying new pipes at 19 places in the city but only three areas were taken up.

Accepting that the distribution system needed a major transformation, Chief Engineer (Jammu), Public Health Engineering (PHE), Sushil Aima said, “Wherever there is a need to lay new pipes, it is being done. But no major project has been initiated so far. Under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation Scheme, there is a provision to revamp the existing network of pipes, tubewells and water tanks,” said Aima.

There are 1, 21,814 water connections in the city. Of these, 78,970 are in the city division I and 42,844 in the city division II. There are 13,549 commercial connections with 12,092 in city- I and 1,457 in city-II, which have been identified for the first phase.

Senior officials in the PHE and Economic Reconstruction Agency (ERA) admit that the focus was on supplying water to new colonies which sprang up after 1990s when the city saw influx of lakhs of people. With the trend continuing, the departments have been forced to divert their scarce funds.

“Under a pilot project, we have taken replacing old network at Karan Nagar, Channi Himmat, Greater Kailash, Sainik Colony, Gurha Bakshi Nagar. The replacement of the entire network is a long-term project,” said Rajinder Gupta, a senior engineer, ERA.