With the onset of the monsoon season, Jagdalpur Municipal Corporation’s (JMC) headquarter was abuzz with complaints regarding muddy and contaminated water supply from different parts of the city.
The problem has initiated a blame-game between JMC and Public Health Engineering Department(PHED).Under a water supply scheme, PHED recently laid pipelines in many parts of the city. JMC officials concerned accused the Department for showing carelessness in the work.
As a result, there were many leakages on joints of the pipelines. As per the officials, rain water is polluting the drinking water, being supplied in many residential localities, by getting mixed through these leakages.City Mayor, Kiran Dev said pure water is being supplied from the filter plant but the same is contaminated due to leakages in the pipelines. The work of repairing the pipelines is underway. “Contaminated water contains large amount of harmful bacteria and its consumption may cause diseases like jaundice, diarrhea etc” said Dr Sanjay Basak.
The civic body officials however had little to say over receiving complaints of drinking water supply mixed with extra quantity of chlorine in some parts of the city.Dr Basak added drinking water of such quality may cause diseases like appendicitis, gastritis, ulcer etc.Notably, JMC earns lakhs of rupees by charging Rs 200/month on per water connection. However, the consumers are forced to drink impure water due to apathy of the officials concerned.
“As most of the residents of this locality don’t have water purifier installed at their house, we have to boil water for drinking and cooking usage. It also increases overall cost of the drinking water,” said Prahlad, a resident of Chhatrapati Shivaji Ward. JMC Commissioner, Ramesh Jaiswal claimed that, “80 per cent of the consumers were being supplied water which are drinkable and of pure quality. The complaints of impure water supply in some localities will be solved soon “.