The responsibility of water supply from various dams in the State Capital will be given in private hands from the new Financial Year 2019-20.
The Drinking Water and Sanitation Department (DSDW) has floated three tenders inviting applications for the operations and management of water supply in the city from the three major dams.
Department secretary Aradhana Patnaik said, “The supply work is outsourced even now but at present separate agencies are given different works like providing staff, cleaning tanks with chemicals or repair work. Now, the plan is to give all the work related to one dam to one agency.”
The three major dams which provide drinking water to the entire city include Rukka Dam, Gonda Dam and Hatia dam. Of these, Rukka Dam provides 33 Million Gallon per Day (MGD) water, Gonda Dam provides 3.5 MGD and Hatia dam provides 7 MDG water in the city.
While the work of providing water connection and collection of water taxes is done by the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC), the basic supply work is still done by DWSD.
Urban circle superintendent engineer, Sushil Kumar said, "Now all the work related to water supply by one dam will be done by the agency except for payment of electricity bill, which will be done by the department."
Explaining the new plan, Kumar said, “Till date every time there was a water pipe leakage, a tender was floated for fixing it and the entire process took several days' time. Now, the one agency selected will be responsible for repair, cleaning and other works.”
The new system will not just save time but also ensure that there is no delay in water supply due to repair issues or other technical error. “We cannot say that it will completely stop but the cases like that will definitely reduce once all the work is given in the hands of one agency,” Kumar said.
A total of three tenders have been floated for the three zones but one company can apply for all the three tenders if they want to.
The various works to be done by the selected agencies includes maintenance of water treatment plant, raw water plant, rapid gravity sand filter, pipeline repair and chlorination. Also, the agencies will be responsible for maintenance of mechanical motor pumps in all the water tankers linked to the dam they are responsible for.
Sources informed that a total of around Rs 14.28 crore will be spent on all the three dams. A budget of Rs 2.54 crore has been set aside for Hatia Dam, Rs 1.8 crore has been allotted for Gonda Dam and Rs 9.94 crore has been allotted for Rukka Dam.