E-Paper
PMC’s 24x7 water supply scheme in deep water with incomplete service reservoirs
The progress of the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) 24x7 water supply scheme is clogged with incomplete projects across the city.
The progress of the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) 24x7 water supply scheme is clogged with incomplete projects across the city.
According to data from the PMC water department, 86 service reservoirs are required to be constructed across the city to store water for the scheme. However, construction of 14 such service reservoirs is stuck due to land issues- wherein two are on government land, four on forest land, three on private land and three are stuck in court cases. Two more service reservoirs are facing opposition from the locals and hence, their construction is stuck in a bottleneck.
According to Nandkishore Jagtap, the engineer handling the project, “We will soon be solving some of the bottlenecks, starting with the Panchvati project, which has been stuck due to an issue with the land owners, but we will be getting the permission in the next 15 days to complete the remaining work which was stopped due to the notice served by the forest department before Diwali 2019.”
The Panchvati hill work in Pashan was halted when the forest department confronted the civic body about accessing their land without requisite permission. According to the PMC, the government had allotted the land to the PMC, but the forest department issued a notice stating that it was a violation of usage of their land for building without any permissions. “We saw a document that states that it belongs to the PMC, but according to the forest department, it is a notified forest, and we had to stop the work that we began one-and-a-half-year ago. Since November 2019, our work is on hold, but we have followed procedure and have sent a request to the central forest department, Nagpur, seeking permissions and we should be getting the permission in the next 15 days,” said Jagtap.
“Out of 86 service reservoirs, 68 are in different stages of completion. At least 27 service reservoirs are 95 per cent complete; five are 60-90 per cent complete; 17 of them are 10-60 per cent complete and in the remaining 37, less than 10 per cent work has been done. Construction of 18 reservoirs is yet to begin,” he added.
A Shreelakshmi, deputy conservator of forest, said, “PMC began building the water tank without any procedure and did not ask us for any permission, hence we objected to it.”
This lead to a halt in the construction of the water tank which is 90 per cent complete and also led to a hold on the construction of water tanks on Fergusson College hill after objections by the forest department.
Water supply scheme
Work on the 24x7 water supply scheme project was initially scheduled to begin in February 2018. However, the project got delayed and work began in December 2018. Initially, PMC was to execute the project in five pilot areas, however, the project will now be happening pan city. The work has already begun in Baner, the first phase of the project. Contractors have to conduct operations and maintenance for the next 15 years.
