The Janibili project in Ganjam district, meant to improve water supply to Brahmapur and its adjoining areas has missed its deadline owing to slow pace of work and ineffective supervision by the PHED.
The high sounding Janibil water supply scheme in Ganjam district is a great fraud on the public of silk city as the Government failed to keep up its promises in supplying water to the home in assured time. The public anger in silk city is rising day by day as there is no improvement in water supply in the city even after the project was inaugurated on March 3. Several intellectual, senior citizens, and scribes cautioned the newly elected representatives to ensure the water supply uniformly to all the 40 wards of BeMC with in a stipulated time frame or else face consequences.
Surprisingly, the MP and MLA did not even visit the different wards to ascertain the water scarcity problems and to interact with the denizens.
Notably, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the first (out of four) phase of the much talked about integrated water supply project, “Janibila Mega Drinking Water Project” worth Rs 431 crore in Ganjam district on March 3 assuring the public that the scheme will benefit more than five lakh people of the silk city as well as its adjoining areas.But the work is moving at a very slow pace and there is no one to effectively coordinate the mega scheme on day to day basis, feel local public.
The Executive Engineer (PHED-Brahmapur), on the other hand, superficially claimed that the work is in full swing and will be completed soon.
In many of the 40 wards of BeMC, the public, mostly the women, are literarily crying for a bucket of water every day under the hot sun for their survival, and there is no one to heed to their problem.Social activist and convener of MASM Abani Gaya alleged that the CM inaugurated the project just before the model code of conduct only to avail political dividend.
Social activist and scribe Rabi Rath demanded a thorough investigation into the delay in project and the amount spent under different heads so far. He demanded that, the contracting firm and the PHED be made accountable for slow pace of work. The Government had claimed at the time of inauguration that the project would be fully functional in five wards of BeMC in first phase.
Gandhinagar Senior Citizens Forum president and social worker Dr KC Panda said the laying of pipelines is yet to be completed fully in all the wards of BeMC. There seems to be nexus between the L&T and the PHED for which the contracting firm is not even bothering to repair the road yet, for which no one is made accountable. In many parts of the city in general and Gandhinagar in particular, most of the roads through which pipes were laid on the ground by digging the road are found in a state of chaos with heaps of soils and stones and the contracting firm didn’t level the cutting portions of the road. Why the payment of the contracting firm is not withheld, he questioned.
Notably, residents of several wards are fighting tooth and nail to get few buckets of water. For instance, Ward-31 of Kamapalli area, Gandhinagar 3rd lane Extn (West), Khalasi Street, New Barracks Street, Gajapatinagar, Ankuli, Industrial Area, Lanjipalli, Bijipur are the worst sufferers. Notably, Brahmapur with 60,000 residential houses is suffering from acute shortage of drinking water over last three decades.