Residents unrelenting, BWSSB struggles to regularise connections

Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is struggling to meet the May 31 deadline of regularising all unauthorised connections in the newly added areas.

 

Reason – residents in these areas have not shown any interest in availing themselves a regular, paid connections as they are used to free water supply. Ever since Cauvery IV Stage II Phase commissioned in October 2012, BWSSB had provided free water supply connections to newly added areas including KR Puram, Mahadevapura and Dasarahalli due political pressure.  

Now, the board is finding it difficult to regularise the water connections. This has not just resulted in water pilferage but caused a huge revenue loss to BWSSB as wellA BWSSB engineer from KR Puram said residents tell them that they are already receiving water and there was no need to take any connection.  

He said the board provided water connections when the new water project was commissioned. But now with residents used to free water supply are now refusing to regularise their connections. 

BWSSB Chairman M S Ravishankar  said due to shortage of manpower, there was delay in processing the application forms for new water connections.  Of the 1,46,000 applications, nearly 86,000 households been installed with meters.  

Engineer-in-Chief T Venkataraju said they have called all engineers for a meeting on May 28 to discuss the issue.  “We will either be regularising or disconnecting the water supply lines strictly in all areas.  First we will ensure regularisation is done with those consumers who are willing to avail a legal connection and later we will deal with those not co-operating,” he added.
 In a meeting held recently between the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and BWSSB, the Bangalore district in-charge minister Ramalinga Reddy had directed the Board to finish the regularisation of water connection so that BBMP could take up asphalting work in these areas.
As some of the house service connection work requires road digging, the Board was asked to complete their work quicklyBBMP’s Standing Committee Chairman for Major Works B Somashekar said they have been receiving complaints from newly added areas about bad road and Palike wants to take up asphalting work.

  “We have been asking BWSSB to complete the work of digging the road so that asphalting work could be taken up before the onset of monsoon,” he said.