Team Herald
PANJIM: This is the other pathetic side of the so-called “development story of Taleigao area”. With most of the sprawling new buildings without proper sewage lines, sewage from here has been flowing into open drains. Now, this sewage has come in contact with damaged water supply lines.
The Public Works Department has been forced to cut off water supply to residents of Aivao-Caranzalem for the past four days after complaints of water contamination reached them.
PWD Executive Engineer Dileep Dhavalikar told Herald that on Saturday residents complained of water contamination and the PWD immediately stopped the supply. “Our team inspected the place and found that with new buildings coming up the water supply pipes of a few residents have been exposed to drains. The supply pipes are rusted and sewage water has entered the supply lines,” he said.
He added that the drains have come up now and the water pipelines were existing earlier. Dhavalikar said that most of the residents do not have sewage line so the waste line is connected to the open drains.
“Nonetheless, our team is on the job and they are changing the lines. There are about 50-60 consumers affected by these contamination. It will take another 8 to 10 days for the work to be completed,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said, the PWD, is supplying water to the residents through tankers.
Residents say they recently found foul water and human excreta flowing through their taps. The angered residents voiced their resentment towards CCP and PWD.
They stated that CCP was solely responsible for this incident due to its negligence and lethargic attitude towards the Caranzalem area.
Caranzalem resident Tulsi Shirodkar said, “We have faced acute shortage of water for the past few months and now we observed this horrific incident. The water from the pipes was brownish in colour and had a very bad odour. The government has now been providing us water through water tankers in the past 2-3 days and we have been told that it will take four days to fix the issue.”
Residents had already been facing acute shortage of water for the past three-four months and there was no justification by the government. Jannu Gawas, another Caranzalem resident said, “We have not been informed about how much time will the shifting of pipelines take. But two-three days before we observed that the water was brown in colour with a bad smell we understood that there was some mixture of the sewage with these pipelines.”
They questioned CCP on why they were not informed about the contamination earlier so that appropriate measures could have been taken.
A resident complained that the CCP and PWD do not have regular checkups on sections they are responsible for, because of which such incidents occur causing inconvenience to residents.
They also said that the Health Department and the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) had been negligent towards the area. The lack of cooperation between government departments have caused major inconvenience to the people residing in the area.
The residents also pointed out that the pipelines have been corroded.
Also, the joints of the pipelines have been severely contaminated and will consume a lot of time to clear the pipelines. The angry residents demanded a proper explanation from the authorities responsible.
They accused the PWD of negligence towards the pipelines as they had informed the department about scarcity of water supply and no action was taken. The residents then informed the authorities about the problem with the foul water available and later there was a checkup. They demanded that proper inquiry should be done and the person responsible be penalized.
