Mumbai: Mercury soars over water woes in Ambedkar Nagar

As Mumbai sizzles with temperatures remaining high in the day the cityrsquos residents are back to battling their water woesEven though the 2013 circular issued by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC water department has promised to offer 135 litres per capita daily LPCD to every Mumbaikar shockingly over 7000 families in Ambedkar Nagar manage to get only 120 litres of water per family in spite of legal connections The reason The 70 alleged lsquowater mafiasrsquo in the locality who hold the key to local water resourcesResidents of Ambedkar Nagar have to queue up for water every dayCiting technical difficulties the BMC has confirmed that it wonrsquot be possible to offer individual connections to families Thus secretaries of various citizen groups and associations were bestowed with the responsibility of segregating water for the families However it is alleged that they limit the stock to six gallons per family about 20 litres each and now numerous families from Ambedkar Nagar have complained that in spite of legal connections they end up shelling R1020 for everygallon on a daily basis and that prices are even hiked to Rs 50 during a water shortageThe BMC water supply department has allotted one water connection to a minimum of seven and a maximum of 20 families in the slum due to its narrow lanes and an unavailability of space Hence to solve the issue the BMC offered one connection to a representative chosen unanimously by the families who will share the connection among themselves However the practice has taken an ugly turn as the representatives often exert authoritarian control over the connections and decide the amount of water to be supplied to each familyBheema Kadam is a legal resident of Ambedkar Nagar who has a ration card light bill and an election card Shalini Tiwari and Marizina Khan too are legal residents of the Nagar and yet they complain that they have been paying R10 for one can of water every day Khan said ldquoWe receive only six cans of water from our taps Our family cannot fulfill basic needs like bathing and cooking with that so we purchase water from outsiderdquoShockingly the families have also paid deposits to their representatives and still are turned down by them Tiwari said ldquoWe were told that water bills have extraordinarily expensive rates and due to this he the representative can give us only five to six cans of water and the rest of the cans are sold by him But if we ask him to give us evidence by showing the bills he refusesrdquoldquoWe pay them around Rs 300 to Rs 00 and also give them a deposit of Rs 1000R3000 Even then we receive only 56 gallons of water and yet we canrsquot complain because we need waterrdquo said KadamA former corporator from the vicinity Vinod Shekhar said ldquoThe question of tackling this issue will be resolved only if residents are given individual water lines I am trying to get a grant for the water linesrdquoPratap Rawat a resident of Ambedkar Nagar and the Mumbai President of Dalit Panther has identified 70 spots where instances of fraud with regards to water supply have taken place ldquoI sent copies of these cases to ward offices municipal commissioner and even the state government but no one has taken action Our demand is that if people are ready to pay for the water individually they should be allotted individual pipelinesrdquo said RawatRamesh Bamble Hydraulic engineer Water Department said ldquoIf the representatives are misbehaving and people want to change them they can officially send us a letter We are ready to help them with the crisisrdquo