GURUGRAM:
Residents of
South City 2 are in the middle of an acute water crisis because regular supply has slowed to a trickle and the void is being filled by
tankers.
According to residents, they routinely face such water supply problems, and private tankers take advantage of the situation and charge them anything between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,800. “Our taps have been running dry for the past four days. More than 700 water tankers were called here on Wednesday alone. The situation was the same on Thursday as well,” said Neeraj Yadav, president of South City 2 RWA.
“On both Wednesday and Thursday, my daughter could not take bath before going to school in the morning as there was no water. We are left with no option but to pay through the nose for water from tankers for our daily needs, despite paying quarterly maintenance to the developer,” said a resident of I Block. “I just want to know how long the water crisis will prevail in Gurugram,” he added.
Although supply was restored on Friday afternoon, residents said the problem keeps recurring. “It is not the first time that these shortages have hit us,” said Ashutosh, another resident. “If it had been a normal shortage due to problems in the pipeline or any other such issue, we would have known. We know what normal water shortages look like. We would have taken it in stride and managed to get it restored somehow. But this is clearly not the case.”
Residents suspect the tanker mafia has a role to play in this. “The developer doesn’t have sufficient manpower to resolve the problem. They appear to be helpless instead of helping residents,” Yadav said.
He alleged that the tanker mafia was being encouraged by peristent water shortages. “Gallons of groundwater are being extracted whenever there is a water shortage, and a lot of it spills on the road. It is a colossal waste of the natural resource.”
“This shortage is third such instance in a month. It seems that the government has no control over colonies that are still with builders in Gurugram,” said
Shailesh Giri, who also lives in the township. “I have already paid one year’s advance maintenance to
Unitech (the developer of South City), but they are yet to pay to civic agencies like
Huda and DHBVN for water supply and streetlights. We request the chief minister to look into the situation of private societies,” he added.
A Unitech spokesperson said he could not immediately trace the source of shortage as he was not familiar with it, but rubbished suggestions from some residents that the maintenance agency “had colluded” with tanker operators to create an artificial water shortage.
