With every passing year and rising concern over the depleting ground water level, the much appreciated step of Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) of making rainwater harvesting technique mandatory is getting faded away due to the civic body lethargy. Ironically, even after one year, no official records has been kept by RMC about the adoption of this much needed water conservation technique.
Playing the same old broken record, Assistant Executive Officer, Ramkrishna Kumar said that the Municipal Corporation will require some more time to compile the details of espousal of rainwater harvesting system within urban vicinity. “Approximately, two-three months time more is required to verify the collected data and compile the figures. So far, we have not kept any record of rainwater harvesting system adopted by households and commercial setups.”
Similarly, RMC Officer (PR), Naresh Kumar Sinha shading off the responsibility simply remarked that after debarring Sparrow Softech Pvt. ltd., the agency roped in for collecting holding tax and scrutinizing task, the verification work of rain water harvesting has come to standstill. Notably, as per the record, approximately 1.42 lakh households are to be verified under the rain water harvesting adoption project.
Moreover, the Municipal Corporation does not have any official record of government buildings decked up with the rainwater harvesting setup as well. The Municipal Corporation after witnessing severe water crisis in 2015 had issued a communiqué in 2016 that all households, commercial setups including government buildings covering vast carpet area of 20,000 sq. ft must espouse the rain water harvesting system.
RMC had also made online provision for individual and different entities to upload the details by tagging the photographs of rain water harvesting setup decked up on their premises, yet it failed to get satisfactory response. Moving a step ahead, physical verification of Self Assessment Forms (SAF) was also supposed to be done in a stimulated time by the concerned agency hired by RMC. Even the physical verification of several units is pending with the concerned agency since long.
The representative of Sparrow Softech Pvt. ltd., Vishal Bhaskar claimed that more than 50 per cent households’ verification is pending; hence it is difficult to mention the exact status of rain water harvesting structures in Capital City at the moment. Notably, the company had received approximately 1.42 lakh SAF during the holding tax collection process and is yet to cover a major chunk to assemble a composite statement of rainwater harvesting.
Furthermore, the deadline for constructing the water conserving techniques ended in April 2017. The field inspection by the Sparrow Softech team members formally began on April 7 but has so far covered 30,000 households only.
The Municipal Corporation had set a month long deadline for all building owners covering 3228 sq. ft or more area to put in place mandatory water harvesting structures.
