Residents of Block E have had no water supply for the past 20 days and say their plight is being ignored as the civic agencies think that they will not come out on the streets in protest.
Hundreds of elderly residents of Block E, Palam Vihar, have been grappling with the problem of no water supply for the past 20 days despite repeated meetings with officials. The area is facing acute water shortage despite tall claims by the authorities that the issue has been resolved. Around 350 families are relying on water tankers and have had sleepless nights for almost three months.
Residents allege that the boosting station in Sector 22 is not supplying water to them as, being senior citizens, they are not on the priority list. “The civic agencies think that we will not come out on the roads and protest like other residents due to our old age. But if the problem is not be resolved, we will hold a bigger protest,” said Col (Retd) RL Mann, a resident of Block E.
Last week, residents had to wake up at 3 am to fill their buckets and tanks as water was being supplied at odd hours. With water just trickling down from the taps, they found filling even one bucket difficult.
SK Kapoor, another resident, says, “We are paying Rs 300 per day for water and have met all the officials concerned over the issue. We’ve requested that as we are old, we find it very difficult to sit under the sun in the afternoon or on the roads waiting for water tankers.”
“If the situation remains the same for another week, private suppliers will increase the charges”, says Naina Kotwal, another resident.
Meanwhile, Haryana Urban Development Authority is blaming Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHVBN) for the problem. HUDA officials say frequent power outages have resulted in the shortage of water supply.
The executive engineer, HUDA visited the area on April 27 and assured residents that the issue will be resolved within a week.
“We were told that the boosting station in Sector 22 has some issues and the water supplied has low pressure due to which the water is only supplied to Sector 22 residents”, says Kethki Agarwal, a resident.
According to a senior HUDA official, the civic agency has deployed two people at the boosting station to ensure balanced water supply.
HUDA officials told City Spidey that the supply was disrupted in the last few days due to the shifting of a master pipeline from Iffco Chowk.
Water shortage has been prevalent in the area since January when work on master pipelines began. The shifting of utilities to enable construction of underpasses on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway compounded the problems further.
