GUWAHATI, June 28 - The Public Health Engineering (PHE) Retired Engineers Forum (PREF) today said, in a memorandum to the Guwahati Development Department (GDD) Minister, that the executing agencies of the under-construction water supply schemes of the city would not be able to keep the revised dates for commissioning these schemes, if the work is allowed to be carried out at the current pace.
The Forum said that it has studied the projects independently and found the actual progress of the work to be in a very poor shape.
Giving the details of its findings, it said only one of the three intake wells of the South-West Guwahati Water Supply Scheme has so far been completed. Of the six raw 1 (a) water pumping mains of the project, only two have been installed. While the civil works of both the water treatment plants of the project have been completed, filter media, etc, are yet to be placed in the first one and other works of the second one remain to be started.
Of this scheme, of the eight beds for the pre-silting tank works on only two beds are in progress. Ninety per cent of the mechanical and electrical works in the water treatment plant of the project have been completed in one unit, while such works in the other unit remain to be started.
About 70 per cent of the around 500 km-long distribution pipe network of the project has been completed; even though only 30 per cent work of its WIMS system has been done so far.
In the case of the South Central Water Supply Scheme, only about 15 per cent work of the intake well has been completed, while the civil work of its water treatment plant's major units like filter house, aerator, etc, are yet to be completed.
Of the eight semi-underground reservoir of the project, only the civil works of the three main reservoirs have so far been completed. About 40 to 45 per cent works of its transmission main have been completed and of its distribution network, about 60 per cent work has been completed, that too, only partially.
No work for the power supply system of this project has so far been done and the estimate for the purpose is yet to be submitted. Similarly, no detailed estimate has so far been prepared for 20 boosting pumping stations of the project.
The fresh tender to provide meters to the house connections of the project is yet to be finalised, while no activity has been seen for installing its SCADA system required to cover all the units, including its distribution network, said the Forum.
Citing the reasons for this slow progress of the execution of the under-construction city water supply schemes, the Forum said, among others, wrong planning by the department concerned due to lack of technical guidance and not taking the public into confidence, non-finalisation of the right of way for laying the pipeline network, dilly-dally tactics of the outside consultants are primarily responsible for the sluggish progress in the execution of the projects.
