THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Lucky are those who get water for a few hours daily in Thiruvanantha-puram, say Kerala Water Authority (KWA) officials. Though KWA had warned of water rationing, certain areas have been completely deprived of water for several days due to a slew of technical and manpower issues. Areas around Sree Chithira Palace, Poojapura, have not received water for four days now. Similarly, at Peroorkada, water supply was disrupted for days in areas like NPP Nagar, Darshan Nagar and AKG Nagar. Low-lying areas of Vanchiyoor, Sreeva-raham, Sreekateswaram etc were also affected.
"Due to drought, each area is allowed water only for a few hours a day. Problem is that water supply to many localities is disrupted by air block or some other issue, as our supply system is suited for 24x7 supply and needs continuous pressure. By the time we rectify an air block, the pumping to the area would have been stopped for the day. Each engineer has just around 5 men working under them but we are getting too many distress calls from everywhere," said a senior official.
The lack of water pressure has been the single biggest hurdle in water supply. Main over head tanks which generally have 50cm water at any given time now have just 2cm of water due to low input from Aruvikkara reservoir. "This leads to a drop in pressure. So localities, mostly the one situated at the end of a pipe network or at a higher elevation gets no water," he added. Despite clear warnings of an oncoming drought, KWA did not resort to small scale rationing from January itself leading to a larger crisis in April, say sources. It has never even conducted drills to prepare for disruption. "Like government, citizens also could have prepared for drought. Many have no underground or overhead storage tanks. It was clear in January itself that we might go into a crisis," said KWA official. Consumers complained that many of the helpline numbers were busy or calls were disconnected after few rings.
