Councillors avoid Alkapuri in crisis

VADODARA, Dec 17: With the water crisis in Alkapuri having largely abated, the role -- or lack of it -- of the councillors has come into ...

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VADODARA, Dec 17: With the water crisis in Alkapuri having largely abated, the role — or lack of it — of the councillors has come into question. The councillors — a breed of people that excels in raising and scoring points at corporation committee meetings â€” has been conspicuous by its absence from the affected areas.

Ironically, the area is represented in the civic body by none other that Mayor Bharati Vyas; another councillor is Ajit Patel, also of the BJP. Both admitted they had not visited the area even once during the crisis, despite reading about it in the papers.

Congress councillor Nandkishore Pardeshi, the third from the area, could not be contacted.

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The problem had cropped up again in Alkapuri last week, two months after a similar fault was rectified, when residents began getting contaminated water due to mixing of sewage and potable water.

When asked why, despite being councillors, they were not aware of the problem until it had been reported in the press, Vyas and Patel said the ward was large and it was not possible to visit the areas daily.

Vyas told Express Newsline that she had come to know about the problem on Monday night when informed by former Deputy Mayor Bhupendra Patel, and had called up the officers concerned on the same day.

Patel said he came to know about the situation on December 8, when a resident of Vishwas Colony called him up. “I then informed the ward office and asked them to rectify the fault,” he added. He was not sure, though, whether the residents had started getting clean water during the day today; “This I will know only tomorrow, when I call up Patel to ask him”, he said.

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Meanwhile, executive engineer of ward number 6 and 10 told Express Newsline that no contamination was detected in water samples collected on Wednesday. And Ashwin Gandhi of Express Hotel said although they had started receiving clean water, they would not use the Corporation water for at least two days as they were cleaning the tanks.

In another development, Mayor Vyas told Express Newsline that she had suggested, some time ago, to the administration that it write the dates on the maps detailing service lines. This, she said, would help in better management as the department would know what the average life-span of the the service lines was and when was time for maintenance.

“The budget for maintenance is low,” she admitted, adding that the administration could plan to allocate the funds for maintenance.