As water crisis hits Sindri, HURL says system upgrade will take time

Dhanbad: Nearly 50,000 residents of the fertilizer township of Sindri have been getting water supply for only half an hour in two days for the last one month.
Hindustan Urvarak and Rasayan Ltd. (HURL), which has been looking after the supply system for the last four years, holds the age-old system responsible for the crisis and claims to be taking remedial measures for correcting the system in a phased manner. Though Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCI) got closed several years ago, the PSU was continuing water supply through private agency in its township till four years ago before HURL took over the plant as part of its revival plan. However, it is for the first time that locals are facing such intense water crisis.
Former FCI employees have accused HURL of unscientific planning for upgradation of water supply system. “The problem arose because the company began cleaning and upgrading both intake well and water reservour at the same time without alternate arrangement. As a result, all the silt and sediments from those reservoirs have blocked the motors which lift the water,” claimed a former FCI employee.
HURL GM, K Jha, said, “We are trying to do whatever possible to ensure regular water supply in the town. While we have taken measures for a permanent solution to the power problem of the water system, we have installed hired motors for the intake well. Since it was a completely defunct system, it will take time.”
“There is no such problem which can’t be solved in a month,” said D N Singh, former executive of the closed Sindri fertilizer factory. He said that the HURL management committed a blunder by cutting the embankment of the water reservoir with the storage capacity of 1.3crore million gallon of water in the name of desilting at a time when the temperature touched 47 degrees Celsius.