When politicians are not around, the truth tends
to come over ground. In a rare admission, a
senior engineer of the water supply division
said the daily requirement for Porvorim was
22 MLD whereas the area receives 15 MLD. The
math isn’t tough. This means the twin city of Panaji, which incidentally
plays host to the seat of government and the legislature,
is 7 MLD short. The engineer rightly pointed out that this
situation has arisen because infrastructure has not kept pace
with development, which in this case means construction of
housing complexes. The obvious corollary is that someone’s
going to end up with less water. Consequently, a group of residents
marched to the office of the executive engineer to protest
the shortage. According to one account there are areas in Porvorim
which do not receive water for more than 15 minutes and
residents have to depend on water tankers.
There is an explanation for this shortage. Porvorim receives
water from the Assonora treatment plant but because it is at
the tail end the pressure is not sufficient. Plans are underway to
construct overhead tanks in Socorro
and Porvorim and a water treatment
plant is also in the pipeline, if
and when finance is released for the
same. However, explanations do not
fill sumps and overhead tanks and
unless water is supplied through
pipelines or with the help of tankers,
anger will burst on to the streets, especially
now that summer is upon us.
The problem of infrastructure chasing development is not
going to go away unless politicians are willing to take hard decisions.
Some years back Dayanand Narvekar had suggested
a freeze in all development works until infrastructure catches
up. Then and even now, it seems to be the sensible thing to do,
but the politicians of the day failed to display the courage and
commonsense to do the right thing. Of late it has become a fad
to promise 24x7 water supply. It might be recalled that Union
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Chief Minister Laxmikant
Parsekar had made this promise in the run up to the February
4 elections. Is Porvorim part of this equation?
Even as the PWD struggles to cope with demand, the Investment
Promotion Board and industries department have been
clearing projects without giving the issue of water availability
much thought. It is not as though the government is not exerting
itself in the creation of water supply projects, it is just that
there is a lag and this is causing a shortage of water supply. We
are led to believe that there is sufficient water in the various reservoirs
scattered across the State and under the ground, the bottlenecks
lie in taking this water from the source to the doorstep.
The government must link its water supply plans to construction
activity if infrastructure is to keep pace with development.
