Steel City admin issues helpline numbers for tanker services

Jamshedpur: With many of the 32 wards experiencing water problem since the beginning of March, Adityapur Municipal Corporation (AMC) has issued mobile numbers for the residents to call on whenever there's requirement of water tanker service."People can call on the mobile numbers for water anytime," said additional town commissioner of AMC, Girja Shankar. The mobile numbers (9234012083), (9334172113), (8540830284) are of the AMC and drinking water and sanitation department officials. Further, each of the city manager has been made in-charge of the five wards, residents can contact the respective city manager for water tankers. “We are keeping ourselves ready with sufficient strength of the tankers for round the clock supply, depending on the requirement," said the city manager. The AMC has a fleet of 14 water tankers, with each having 6,000 litres capacity, for doing rounds in the affected areas. If required, we will take help of the Tata Steel Utility and Infrastructure Services Ltd (TSUISL) for water tankers.The public representatives said that almost all the wards in the AMC command area will experience moderate to acute water crisis in the next four months. At several places, the ground water level has depleted over 100 feet due to insufficient rain in 2022, acute water crisis is staring at us, said ward councillor, Rajrani Mahato.She led a delegation of the residents of ward 11 to DWSD divisional office on Friday, giving representation to the officials for water supply through tankers. The 2.50 lakh population in the command area requires 23 MLD (million litre water) daily, but AMC's current capacity is 15 MLD, said Pradhan.In February 2019, the then chief minister, Raghubar Das had laid the foundation of Rs 395-crore piped drinking water project, which was expected to get complete in March 2022. Dedicated to the AMC command area, the project is still not halfway through. With 11 water towers and two filtration plants, with each having a capacity of 30 MLD and 60 MLD, to be set up at Sitarampur dam and Sapra respectively, the water project is supposed to provide piped drinking water to 49,500 households in AMC. Excluding, 8,500 old piped connections, only 18,000 households have got new connections so far. "In all likelihood, the project will take one more year to complete," Shrivastav said. AMC officials said that forest department's delay in giving no objection certificate to DWSD for setting up the water towers in its command area is one of the reasons behind the delay in the implementation of the project.