At a time when the capital city is reeling under an acute shortage of piped drinking water, the Kerala Water Authority has left unattended, for over a month, a leaking pipeline near the entrance to the railway station on the Powerhouse road.
By now, thousands of litres of precious drinking water has gone waste even as the repair of the line is caught in a bureaucratic quagmire. KWA officials say the repair of the leaking line, which they say is most probably a ‘service’ connection, could not be undertaken because the Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) had not given permission to cut the road.
“We had followed this matter up many a time. Always we were told that there would be a joint inspection of the site by the KWA and the board officials and any sanction would be given only after that. Till date we have not had a joint inspection or permission to cut open the road. We tried to identify the source of the leak without cutting open the road but we could not. The leak appears to be coming from an already plugged line,” a KWA engineer explained.
Recently at a meeting chaired by Water Resources Minister Mathew T. Thomas, officials of the KWA raised the issue of the leaking line yet again. Subsequently it was decided that the KWA should go head with the repair of the line and not wait for permission from the board.
An executive engineer of the KWA told The Hindu that the repair work on the leaking line has been scheduled for Saturday. Since the line is not a major carrier of water there would be no disruption of drinking water supply to nearby areas, the official added.
