PUNE: Keshavnagar residents are dreading the peak summer months with acute water shortage gripping the area as early as March amid none to little civic supply.
Chandresh Yadav, chairman of Anandtara Whitefield Residences in Keshavnagar, said, “My society of 280 flats is almost entirely dependent on water supplied by private tanker operators. PMC water comes only once in a fortnight for 1-2 hours at best. We have made numerous complaints, but to no avail. They [PMC] have started sending just one water tanker per day, which is inadequate for around 1,000 residents.”
The residents said housing societies were forced to shell out lakhs of rupees per month to buy water from private tanker operators to meet their drinking and utility needs. “It’s an injustice. We are being charged water tax over the past 3-4 years, but are getting almost nothing in return from PMC. Ideally, the civic body should compensate us for the enormous expenditure,” Yadav said.
Vikas Singh, committee member, Godrej Infinity society, said, “We are calling for 76 water tankers per day for our society of more than 1,200 flats. We don’t have PMC water pipeline, so the cost per month runs into Rs 11-12 lakh and more than Rs 1 crore annually. Even the quality of water provided by private tanker operators has worsened over the last two months. Since one-and-a-half months, people in the area are coming down with gastrointestinal and other health issues because of poor quality water.”
Pravin Amrutrao Tathe from the management committee of Atlantica East society in Keshavnagar said, “We need 10 water tankers per day for a society of 163 flats. Our current water bill is Rs 3 lakh per month. There is also a shortage of tanker water too, leaving the residents in a difficult situation.”
A PMC official from the water supply department said, “Keshavnagar was merged into PMC limits a few years ago. Some societies are being supplied water through old gram panchayat pipelines. Some societies (those in the outskirts of Keshavnagar) are indeed affected as they don’t have civic pipeline network. We are, however, making provision in our budget to set up pipelines in the affected areas.”
Developers and landowners are likely to benefit from provisions such as relaxations in the side margins. This will lead to an increase in high-rise buildings in the added areas, mostly in the city’s fringes.
