Kotkapura, June 28 – Already facing problem of inadequate and irregular water supply, nearly one lakh population of Kotkapura town is now getting supply of impure, brackish and sewage mixed water for the purpose of drinking.

While well-to-do families are making overtime use of the reverse osmosis (RO) units installed at their houses, the poor and downtrodden have no option but to use the polluted water or rely on hand pumps, which give them water with high fluoride contents.

Accusing the Water Supply and Sanitation Department of supplying untreated drinking water to the residents in the town, former Kotkapura MLA Mantar Singh has written to the state government to take remedial steps before there was an outbreak of any major water-borne disease.

“We have neither any sewerage nor water-supply system. But many times, there is a supply of sewage mixed water in our taps,” rued Rulia Ram, a resident of Chopariawala Bagh area in Kotkapura.

The sewage and water supply pipes run parallel at many places in the town. As the condition of both these pipes is very poor at many places and residents of these areas use suction pumps to meet their requirement of water, there is inflow of sewage in these drinking water supplying pipes at various leakage points, thus polluting the drinking water supply, said a senior functionary in the Water Supply and Sanitation Department.

Vinay Agarwal, junior engineer in the department, blamed residents for this mixing of sewage and drinking water.

As the sewage in the drains outside many houses is running over the water supply pipes and there is adjustment of water suction pumps in almost all houses in the town, there is always a lurking fear of leakage in the water supply pipes and these sucking and mixing the sewage into water supply pipes, said another functionary in the department, preferring anonymity.

“The Municipal Committee has spent more than Rs 100 crore in the past two decades on improving the drinking water supply in Kotkapura, but there is hardly any change in the scenario. Rather, it is worsening with each passing day,” said Sadhu Ram Deora, a social activist and president of Lok Manch, Kotkapura.

“The Akalis boast of bringing unprecedented development in 10 years of their rule and now, for the past two years, Congress leaders have been promising to usher in development but most of the residents in Kotkapura still want potable water,” said Munni Ram, a resident.

“Sewage has flooded our streets. We do not have potable water supply. All our requests to our elected municipal councillors and politicians in the past many years went in vain,” residents rued.

*Original article online at https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/bathinda/kotkapura-gets-contaminated-water-residents-fume/794387.html