: The Guntur Municipal Corporation’s dream of supplying 24X7 water supply may take yet another year due to delay in land acquisition, lack of coordination among various departments and delay in internal pipe lining of water lines.
The comprehensive water project, taken up with a cost of Rs. 460 crore, has been the biggest of its kind in the history of the GMC.
The GMC had tapped Rs. 366-crore grants from the World Bank, Rs. 90-crore loan from the Andhra Pradesh Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation (APUFIDC) for the project designed to meet the drinking water requirements of people till the year 2050. The project has been awarded to Mega Firm and NCC Firm, the two executing agencies.
Engg. staff, contractors
under fire
But even after three years since it had begun, the project has not been completed putting an enormous strain on the existing resources.
The city meets its water requirements from multiple sources, including 80 MLD from the filtration plant from Takkellapadu and 10-20 MLD from Sangam Jagarlamudi.
This summer has been testing for the GMC but after copious inflows into Prakasam Barrage in the last week of May, there has been no water scarcity.
The delay in acquisition of land to an extent of 6 metres at Manasa Saravoar Park in Takkellapadu to facilitate laying of 1.6-metre pipeline, the difficulty in undertaking work on the Nulakpet-Kolanukonda railway line, Krishna Canal-Nandivelugu road and inter connection in Nehru Nagar etc has become a major a bottleneck.
Addressing a review meeting on Monday, Municipal Commissioner S. Naga Lakshmi took to task the engineering staff and contractors for the delay in completion of the project. The Commissioner was particularly unhappy over the tardy progress in construction of Elevated Service Reservoirs in several parts of the city.
Procedural delays, lack of coordination derail Municipal Corporation’s ambitious plans
