Coimbatore: With drinking water becoming scarcer by the day and supply being made once in 10 days or even 15 days in many areas, the Coimbatore Consumer Cause has called upon the State Government to keep in abeyance an order issued in 2007 that allowed local bodies to release drinking water connections on demand.

“We request the Government to review the above order (G.O. M.S. 97, dated July 12, 2007) and to keep [it] in abeyance at the earliest, before the drinking water problem aggravates during summer,” secretary of the consumer welfare organisation K. Kathirmathiyon has said in a letter to the Secretary of Municipal Administration and Water Supply.

The Government announced through the above order that all applicants should be provided with water connections within seven days from the date of receipt of applications, without any ceiling on the number of connections in municipalities and town panchayats.

If the connection could not be provided in a particular area because of technical feasibility, it should be provided within a month.

Though the intention of the Government was to provide water connections to all, there was not enough water to meet the demand from all these connections, Mr. Kathirmathiyon said.

The connections should be provided by local bodies on the basis of the availability of drinking water.

But, in practice, many excess connections, ranging from 300 per cent to 600 per cent, were already provided, he alleged.

Many local bodies struggled to provide adequate drinking water to all because the number of connections outstripped the quantum of water allocated to them.

These local bodies could supply water only once in 15 days or 20 days, he said.

The number of connections should be proportionate to only the quantum of water allocated by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board to each local body, he said.

As per norms, town panchayats should provide 90 litres per capita per day (lpcd) of drinking water and municipalities should supply 110 lpcd.

However, despite all this, the actual supply was much below the norms, Mr. Kathirmathiyon alleged.

Courtesy - Hindu