Residents of Kalina protest dirty water and unsafe public toilets

Residents are full of stories of waiting hours at the tap in anticipation of even a little water, only for it to splutter out murky and brown. Their timing for water supply is 3.45am, resulting in disrupted nights. At best, they say, they get a few minutes of clean running water after all the muck. This has been going on for 10 years, they say, but the problem has gotten more acute lately

Mumbai: Residents of Kalina in Santacruz, who have been long complaining about contaminated water, along with party workers of the BJP, came out on the streets to protest at 11am on Tuesday, with a host of issues, including bad roads, dirty and unsafe common toilets and poor cleaning of the gutters in their area.

Exhausted at the irregular water supply and dirty water they have been receiving, the residents of Kalina took out a march to the BMC H East ward office along with BJP party members in protest at Santacruz. (Vijay Bate/HT Photo)

Around 2,000 people participated, taking time out of their working days, marching from their neighbourhood of Shastrinagar, Jamblipada, Kunchikorve Nagar, and other areas of Kalina to the BMC’s H Eastward office in Santacruz.

Nandkumar Gupta, for his pani puri stall, “steals” water from a gurdwara. “They’ve said I can take one bottle, but while returning home, I sneak in and take another four,” said Gupta. Another, Afzal Hussain, who owns a vegetable cart, borrows water from the mosque, which has an old boring well. Abdul Alim Khan, a social worker, buys the 20-litre Bisleri water for drinking despite pinching his wallet to do so. Uma Shankar Gupta has two motors installed in his home to increase the force of water.

“We are frustrated and exhausted. We have heaps and heaps of complaints filed at the ward office, but there has been no effect. Instead, new and illegal water connections keep being handed out for over ₹50,000, and the new buildings and commercial establishments in the area receive water. We are being neglected,” said Ishan Pujari, another resident.

Most of these residents are low-income earners residing in slums. Many of them were rickshaw drivers and had parked their rickshaws nearby to come for the protest.

When the protest was announced, they received a message on Monday telling them their issues were resolved and they would start getting clean water from the day of the protest. The residents agreed that the flow and the quality had been better on Tuesday but were suspicious it would continue.

A protest held last month by the Congress also took up the same issue, with thousands of residents making a show.

When the time came for the protestors to place their demands in front of the assistant commissioner, had left.

“We waited two hours for her, insisting that we would not leave if she did not come,” said Anil Fulchand Upadhyaya, the BJP district president who was present for the protest with Susham Sawant, another BJP leader.

In the end, the meeting took place with the deputy hydraulic engineer, who assured them that the residents would receive clean water from then on.

Upadhyaya sounded assured that the Deputy Hydraulic Engineer’s promise would be kept and that the resident’s water woes would be resolved. If not, he said, they along with the member of Parliament, Poonam Mahajan, from the ward, would put a lock on the ward office. “What’s the point of running a ward office when you cannot supply water to your residents?” he asked.

A senior official from the Hydraulic engineer department said, “There was some change in time and zoning issue for water release which has led to a decrease in water pressure. The whole H Eastward is affected, but areas like Kalina are the worst affected. The changing in time in the Zone there caused this. We are aware of the problem and will fix this soon. This will be fixed soon.”

“Tomorrow morning, the Joint Engineer will visit the site where contaminated water is being received at the time of supply. He will sort it out. The whole H East area is suffering from water shortage, and it will be resolved in two to three days,” a BMC official said.