Hyderabad: The Water Board is accepting applications and a fee to provide connections, knowing fully well there are no pipelines — especially in new colonies in the 12 outlying municipalities that were merged with the GHMC years ago.
New colonies that have emerged in Jadagirigutta, Quthbullapur, Rajendranagar and LB Nagar, where residential hubs are mushrooming, are losing out because applicants are kept waiting. The board does not even inform them their areas don’t have pipelines.
There are cases where residents had applied during the Congress rule in undivided AP and still have not got connections. K. Vikram Kumar of Rajendranagar said: “Our builder had applied for a water connection with file No. 2012-05-2607. There has been no movement. Two governments have changed since.”
He claimed the area has more than 500 families who are waiting for water connections. “We are paying around Rs 40 lakh as municipal tax every year. The water pipeline is just 80 metres away.”
A resident of Vinayaka Residency, Chinthal, has even filed a complaint with the consumer forum, stating that the builder had applied for a connection in 2013 and was sanctioned one in 2014.
“After regular follow up, the Water Board permitted the contractor to lay an underground pipeline, which was completed in 2015. Since the network is not complete, no connection was given,” he said.
P. Madhusudan of Vasavinagar Colony, Boduppal, said, “We were allotted a connection but it has not been implemented because the trial run on the pipeline is pending for five months.”
His family depends on contaminated groundwater, he said. A senior officer from the board’s revenue department said that the board had invited applications from areas that were close to the existing network from where connections could be given.
He said the Water Board had conducted a demand survey and had asked the government for funds to lay a pipeline, including inlet and distribution and storage tanks in these areas. He added works will begin soon.
Pipeline project pending
Work on two multi-crore projects, one by the JNNURM at Rajendranagar and another, funded by the World Bank at Malkajgiri, is in progress to upgrade the pipeline to Water Board standards.
Due to incomplete work, residents continue to get polluted, irregular water.
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, had released a loan of Rs 236.98 crore in 2013. The GHMC provided Rs 33.85 crore and the state Rs 67.72 crore, totaling Rs 338. 54 crore, to cover 4 lakh residents in Malkajgiri.
The project that began in 2014 was to finish within two years. B.T. Srinivasan, general secretary of the Malkajgiri Welfare Association, said, “The first deadline of June 2016 has been crossed but only 65 per cent of the work is complete.”
