Piped water to Silk City by year-end

BERHAMPUR: Good news for water-starved residents of Berhampur. All residential households in the Silk City will get piped water connection by the end of December.
The drive to identify the households without water connection will be carried out from March 6 to 10. Water melas will be conducted in different locations of the city and people asked to apply for water connection.

Before holding the melas, massive awareness will be created in all wards to encourage people apply for water connection, said commissioner, Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC), Chakrabarti Singh Rathore. The water-management committee, constituted in each ward of the BeMC, will conduct door-to-door survey to identify households without water connection.

The drive will be undertaken under the state government's ambitious 'universal water connection for all urban households by 2020'. With this the drinking water problem in the city will be solved, said MLA (Berhampur) R C Chyaupatnaik.

Under the project, all fees for water connection would be exempted for urban poor, said executive engineer, public health engineer department, Berhampur, Sitaram Panda.

For others, water connection charge (Rs 3,000) will be collected in 30 instalments, he said.

Around 45,000 households in the city would be benefited from the scheme, he said. While the BeMC has around 77,000 households, water connections have been provided to 31,243 households so far, an official source said. The BeMC has 40 wards. Of them, seven wards have been fully covered by piped water while the other 33 wards have been covered partially.

The executive engineer said while the work for water supply would start from April 15 in the households, water supply will made after November following completion of the ongoing Janibili water supply project. The Rs 581.81-crore project, which started in November 2016, is scheduled to be completed by November, the source said.

The Janibili project is being designed keeping an eye on the population of the city by 2030, said Panda. Under the project, 145 million litre per day (mld) water will be provided to the city. At present, the city is getting around 54.50 mld water from all sources against the demand of 60 mld for 4.18 lakh population.

The water supply drastically reduces during the peak summer when the supply from Rushikuly river system comes down, the source said.