The water supply pipeline replacement work in the capital city has progressed at snail’s pace since the last three years.
The decade-old pipeline which caters to more than 12,000 water supply connections of the city was to be replaced under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).
Due to corrosion the pipelines are vulnerable to come in contact with sewage and drainage causing the possibility of water being contaminated. Even a draft report, Rapid Baseline Assessment of the Panjim city, had stated “Water supply shows presence of E. coli due to contamination with sewage. Hence, both water supply network and sewage network need to be upgraded.”
The report was prepared by the CRISIL Risk and Infrastructure Solutions Limited and submitted to the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India in October 2013 under the Capacity Building for Urban Development Project. The report had stated that the Non-revenue Water (NRW) was as high as 47% and Un-accounted for Water (UFW) level is 35% of the water supply.
The Public Works Department (PWD) data states Panjim city is covered 95% by service lines. PWD has laid more than 88 kms of pipeline in its duty of supplying water to the citizens of the capital city.
However, under the JNNURM, the process of replacing the water supply pipelines in the city from the current asbestos cement (AC) to High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) pipes has not progressed much during the last three years with less than 50 per cent of the work completed.
According to PWD, government had launched the replacement project in 2013 and by the end of year 2014, 35 kilometres of pipeline was replaced. However, in the 2014-15 only 5 kms of pipeline was replaced and further in 2015-16 only 2.5 kms of pipeline was replaced and no work has progressed during the last one year.
PWD Executive Engineer Dileep Dhavalikar informed that the work of replacing the old service connections to the households will be taken up and completed soon.
He said “With the new government in place we will continue the work of replacement and hope to complete the work soon. In some cases road cutting permissions from the Corporation of City of Panaji (CCP) are being sought and we hope the works will resume soon.”
However, with monsoons around, sources inform that the work will resume only post monsoons in the month of October later this year.
