JOIN USKR Puram residents reluctant to avail new water connections
The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) seems to be trying all kinds of tactics to ensure that consumers in KR Puram Assembly constituency regularise their water connections.
Ever since the BWSSB commissioned its additional water supply to the City through Cauvery IV stage II phase project, it is struggling to convince citizens to avail new water connections.
At KR Puram, it is a whole new ball game for the Board as the residents are reluctant to obtain new connections as they have got used to free supply. According to BWSSB records, of the 80,000 household connections laid, only 6,000 consumers have actually obtained a proper water connection.
Initially, when the project was launched in October 2012, the then MLA had organised a special function to receive Cauvery water to the water-starved constituency. After the commissioning of the project, water was supplied free of cost to the residents for over four months by BWSSB. When the Board started to incur loss on the water supply, it limited the supply to these areas. The Board also discontinued supply through water tankers to the households to encourage them to regularise their connections.
But, the strategy did not help the Board. Three corporators visited BWSSB head office recently to persuade the engineer-in-chief to continue water supply through tankers. Former corporator of A Narayanapura ward, S S Prasad, who met the Board's engineer-in-chief, said that BWSSB was not following a proper system in providing new water connections and that is the reason why residents were reluctant to regularise their connections. “The private contractors’ lobby is thriving, looting poor people in the name of providing new water connections. These contractors are demanding huge amounts for the small work of laying the pipelines. This is exactly why people are reluctant to go in for new connections,” Prasad added.
However, T Venkataraju, engineer-in-chief, BWSSB, said that to solve the residents’ problems, they would be issuing 'demand note' (forms) from June 20, which will include Greater Bangalore Water and Sanitation Project (GBWASP) cost, meter cost, metering fixing charges and pro-rata charges. “We will engage BWSSB contractors to enable the water connections for the residents in KR Puram. The Board employees will go door-to-door and issue demand notes, which will have two separate forms. Once the forms are filled and necessary payments made, water connections will be enabled to the households immediately,” he said.
Venkataraju said that the Board will help the residents in regularising their connections, but paying for the connections is inevitable.