Poor KWA Pipeline main cause of water shortage

TRIPUNITHURA: There is water is everywhere but the residents of Tripunithura don’t have any. As it turns out, there is a stream of potable water that has formed due to a leakage in the Kerala Water Authority’s (KWA) main pipeline under the Pettah bridge here. The stream is so wide that one can mistake it to be a natural one.Following inaction from the KWA over the shortage of drinking water or any attempt to correct the leak, residents of Tripunithura gheraoed the executive engineer of KWA on Tuesday. The engineer did not provide any solutions or time frame to correct the leakage or shortage of water, rather only mentioned of blockage in the main pipeline as the cause of distortion in the water supply. Another concern is the gaps in the main pipeline. These holes can pollute and infect the water in the pipeline which could lead to another outbreak like the e-coli outbreak recently.A few months ago, the vigilance department of KWA had initiated a drive to root out illegal water connections. Their drive was short lived when they were prevented from higher-ups after they caught scores of builders and hoteliers with illegal connections. These connections are putting the KWA at a loss. But the ones profiting are private agencies who haul water in tankers from villages to meet the shortage in supply. Furthermore, these agencies don’t have the proper licence or quality control mechanisms to ensure purity of the water supplied.