Coimbatore Consumer Cause has come down heavily on the way local bodies regularise illegal water connections.
In a release here, the organisation's secretary K. Kathirmathiyon has said the State Government by way of Government Order GO (MS) 65, dated April 12, 2010, had permitted all town panchayats, municipalities and corporations to regularise unauthorised water connections by collecting two times the deposit amount as penalty.
This was most unfortunate as the Government should have taken strong action against such connections.
Amnesty
It had instead provided amnesty for a paltry amount. Earlier, in 2002, the GO (MS) 81, dated June 21, 2002, had permitted town panchayats and municipalities to regularise all illegal connections by accepting a penalty of Rs. 3,000 for each domestic connection and Rs. 5,000 for others.
Then it had stated that “severe action should be taken against those responsible for the illegal connections.”
If any action, even though not severe, had been taken how could have the illegal connections existed from 2002 to 2010, Mr. Kathirmathiyon has asked.
The Government had already regularised illegal layouts, illegal constructions and now illegal water connections.
Such actions would only encourage the people to prefer the wrong way and it was definitely not a healthy trend.
In his letter to the Government in this regard, he had suggested that the Government should review the aforementioned order, keep it in abeyance before the drinking water problem turned for the worse.
He had pointed out that the Government had announced through the aforementioned order that all the applicants who wanted water connection would be provided the same within seven days from the receipt of the applications.
If connections could not be provided in a particular area due to technical feasibility, connections in those areas would be provided within a month from the date of receipt of the application.
The local bodies were supposed to provide water connections based on the availability of drinking water. But in practice, they had 300 per cent to 600 per cent excess connections and that was without sufficient source of water.
This had forced the local bodies to supply water only once in 15 or 20 days, which the public stored for longer period.
The consumer organisation had brought the situation to the notice of the Government saying that if connections were to be granted or illegal connections regularised without increasing the availability of water source, then the purpose or intention of the Government would not be met.
The current situation had only resulted in sharing existing drinking water supply with the new connections, leading to reduction in quantity and increase in duration of water supply.
Such a situation had prevented the local bodies from supply water as per norms. Town panchayats are supposed to supply 90 litres per capita per day (lpcd) and municipalities 110 lpcd. Considering the shortage of water supply during summer, the Government must review the order, he said.
