Six wards in Chittoor, five in Cheranalloor face severe scarcity
Chittoor residents on Wednesday staged a sit-in at the Kerala Water Authority’s (KWA) regional office against the shortage of water in their area for the past 15 days.
Tony Cheeku, president of Chittoor panchayat, along with members of the panchayat and block panchayat members, led the people’s protest gheraoing senior officials of KWA in the office.
“In spite of our protest, officials did not respond to our demand as pumping was stopped by 4.30 p.m. that left many areas in Chittoor still without water,” said Ms. Cheeku.
Six wards in Chittoor (wards 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12) and five wards in Cheranalloor (15, 16, 17, 3 and 2) have been facing acute water shortage.
“I had met KWA officials even in the midst of election campaigns and they had promised to look into it, but nothing was done,” said Ms. Cheeku.
Coming down heavily on KWA, Hibi Eden, MLA, said water shortage had been a perennial problem in Cheranalloor, and in recent times Chittor panchayat too.
“The problem is the inefficient distribution of water. Nothing has been done to ensure continuous pumping or increase the time of pumping to ensure that people at the tail end of the distribution system also get water. We had suggested a short-term solution and a long-term solution too. But KWA had been lax in implementing them,” said Mr. Eden.
KWA’s response
KWA officials told The Hindu that there was a leakage on the main distribution line of 42 inches recently which resulted in distributing less water to Pachalam and Vaduthala. By the time the leak was plugged and water supply got restored, there was a pumping shutdown at Aluva because of electrical panel board problem that resulted in the 48-inch main pipeline distributing less water to the city.
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