CHENNAI: It has been 13 months since close to 500 families along LB Road in Adyar have not been provided with Metro Water supply though they have been paying due water tax. Residents alleged that due to lack of coordination between Chennai Corporation and Metro Water, repair works in underground water pipes have been delayed for five months.
The issue started in February 2018, when residents complained to Metro Water about sewage contamination in their piped water connection. Officials spotted the root cause of the problem and informed residents that the existing pipeline had to be connected to a line on the other side of LB Road. “They brought pipes and stored them near the Zone 13 head office. But as they couldn’t get the road cut permission from the corporation, work couldn’t be commenced. These pipes were lying around for over five months now and were removed after elections dates were announced,” said Chandra Mouli VR, a resident.
Because of this long-pending repair, water connection has not been restored to two streets namely Srinivasamurthy Avenue and Krishnamachari Avenue on LB Road. As a result, dependency on private water tankers and borewells have increased considerably. “We have water in our borewells for the time-being. But many individual houses around our apartments switched to buying water tankers as their wells had dried up. We are dire need of Metro Water supply as summer sets in,” said another resident.
Though repeated complaints about this issue was sent to the CM special cell and ward level authorities were notified about this problem regularly, no action has been taken so far, said locals.But Metro Water officials said the work was completed a month ago and water supply was resumed to all houses along LB Road when officials checked the connections three weeks ago. “It is true that work was put on hold as we did not receive road cut permission from the corporation. Pipes had to be changed as some were leaking due to pollution. But we rectified the problem in February. Maybe due to less availability of water, supply must be reduced.”