Ahead of Summer 2020, the war of words between the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLA N. Karthik and the Coimbatore Corporation seems to have intensified, as the former has fired a fresh salvo accusing the civic body of poor water supply.
Mr. Karthik says that supply of water from borewells for non-potable purposes is poor as the persons tasked with regulating the water supply are proxies of former AIADMK councillors or those close to the ruling party. The persons who take on contract the water distribution not only poorly regulate water supply but also claim money by submitting bogus bills – that is claim maintenance for borewells that are in disuse. At over ₹ 2,000 a month a borewell as maintenance, this works out to crores of rupees a year for the city, he charges.
Denying the allegation, Coimbatore Corporation engineers say, before countering the allegations, the civic body likes to inform the city’s residents that there is unlikely to be any shortage of ground water, as the moonsoon rains were good last year, resulting in recharge of ground water.
This year none of the field engineers has submitted demands for digging fresh borewells – something that they usually do around this time of the year to make up for defunct borewells to improve ground water supply.
The new borewell claims that the civic body is processing are that of last year and this only underscores the fact that yield from ground water has been good.
That the proxies of ruling party or councillors take on contract the maintenance of borewells and water supply is not unique to the AIADMK , the engineers say.
Until a few years ago, the Corporation was perfunctorily clearing the bills the contractors presented. After 2014, the Corporation asks the contractors to also furnish details of the power consumed by motors attached to each of the borewells under their maintenance to ensure that it does not clear bogus claims for defunct borewells.
It is now a routine in the Corporation that contractors of all the 2,000-odd borewells do so, the engineers point out. The engineers, however, say that there is one problem that the senior Corporation officials look into: the issue of replacing motors or adding new pipes to reach underground water. Given the ₹ 2,574 a borewell a month the Corporation gives, the contractors are reluctant to either repair the motors or add more pipelines or take up other maintenance work.
Without looking into such issues for fear of incurring expenditure, they declare that such borewells are defunct as water yield is negligible. To overcome the problem, the Corporation should give the contracts not ward-wise but zone-wise.