GUWAHATI, Dec 1 - The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has demanded a detailed report on the current status of the Greater Guwahati Water Supply Project.
�This project was launched in 2009 during the Congress regime. Now even the BJP government is about to complete its five year term and yet we have not seen any progress,� LDP stated in a press release.
It added, �The Government of India has a norm of supplying 135 litres per capita per day (lpcd) water supply to towns and cities not equipped with sewerage system and 150 lpcd for metro cities with sewerage. If we apply the norm of 135 lpcd to Guwahati, then it comes to a water demand of at least 229 million litres per day (mld) by the residents. But in reality, the total installed capacity in Guwahati is only 75.5 mld and out of this 40 per cent or 30.2 mld is lost as leakages. This is the actual reality of water supply in the city.�
The party said that the Government of Assam had taken up four major water supply projects �in order to provide affordable, reliable, safe and continuous supply of potable water to the Guwahati Metropolitan Area�, with the funding from the Government of India (JNNURM) for the South West region, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the North and South Central regions and the ADB for the South East region.
�In December 2019, the Guwahati Development Department Minister assured in the Assam Legislative Assembly that proposed water supply projects �will definitely finish� by 2022. Our question is whether after months of lockdown is it still on the track to be completed by then? It has been a decade since the project started. How long will people of Guwahati wait even for the basic services?,� said LDP State chairman Holiram Terang.
State president of LDP Guna Gogoi said, �Apart from the municipal corporation, the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) and the Guwahati Metropolitan Drinking Water & Sewerage Board also supply water to some parts of the city. Why we cannot have a single agency to look after the water supply in the city? We have so many projects going on and yet Guwahati is still struggling for potable water. We demand that the Government publish a white paper providing details of each of these projects and the expected timeline for completion.�