What bad management leads to

The city population is growing fast without a corresponding expansion of the utility services. Water supply in particular has always been inadequate. The situation reached such a passe on some occasions in the past that people had to bring out processions to give vent to their hurt feelings caused by erratic water supply. Even today the shortfall is around 10 crore litres a day, which means a large number of people are suffering owing to insufficient supply of water.

The sufferers' agony might be doubled by the fact that faulty and leaky pipes cause such huge wastage. It is really hard to accept that the problem stems from poor maintenance and management of the water supply system.

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WASA must have been aware of how the water crisis was made worse by the leaky pipes. Some of the pipes were laid during the British days, yet they are still used for supplying water to people in the old part of the city. WASA did not replace the pipes despite knowing that they have developed cracks and could not be used any longer.

The ruptured pipes are a source of other problems as well. Consumers have long been complaining that WASA water is often found to be contaminated -- a charge the WASA authorities could never quite refute. It is no secret that people in this city of abysmal pollution suffer from waterborne diseases almost round the year. And that can be explained by the fact that they drink water coming through leaky and rusty pipes. Imagine how bad the situation becomes when the pipelines go under floodwater, a far from unusual phenomenon. It is an example of how one problem creates another.

The WASA authorities are reported to have identified the pipes along its 258km supply lines that have to be replaced. However, they have to act with a sense of urgency since repair and replacement of pipes is a job that should have been done long ago. For some reason or the other, WASA failed to address a problem of grave public concern and allowed it to grow into a source of wastage. Now it must make some special efforts to remove the holes in the supply system and alleviate the sufferings of people facing scarcity of water on a regular basis.