Come out in open and fight for your rights

K Ramanathan Iyar/Chennai

Despite having good monsoon and almost-to-brim rivers/lakes all around Chennai, safe drinking water is still a distant dream for Chennaites.

It’s actually a booming business for the mushrooming drinking water supply companies in Chennai, which supply bottled-water of various volumes to the denizens. Is this water safe for consumption? Will it protect them from water-born diseases?

G K Nair, vice president of Tharangini residents welfare association in Mogappair West, feels that the water, supplied from these companies is ‘not at all safe’, and alleges that these companies, to get extended profit margin, don’t even follow the purification process.

“Most of the bottles are old; some even damaged and don’t have stickers giving details of the manufacturers and quality standard specification etc. Even worse, I have noticed and complained to our caretaker about pasting of some other company’s stickers on other’s bottles. One of my neighbours found tadpoles inside the water bottle. So, we doubt the quality of the drinking water. Most of the residents here boil water before using it for cooking or drinking purposes. Though this process makes our monthly water bill costlier but we cannot take a chance. We spend around Rs 1,000 per month for drinking water,” he rues.

Recently the city administration has banned a few water-bottling units in and around Chennai for not complying with the rules prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS). But, still, many companies around the southern metro are still floating norms and making huge profits.

It’s shame that the city like Chennai, which boasts itself as one of the ‘leading metros’ of the country, still doesn’t have effective water supply system. Not all residents are lucky to get metro water in their kitchen taps. There are certain ‘posh’ areas where the Chennai Corporation has made arrangements to give metro water connection even to high-rise apartments. In some areas like Kodambakkam, Choolaimedu, residents get water though hand pumps or through water lorries. The worst part is that in fast developing areas like Mogappair and Avadi, the basic infrastructure like potable water and good roads are still a distant dream for the residents, who have purchased their flats for not less than Rs 20 lakhs only a few months ago.

For example, in Alacrity flats in Mogappair, the first residental complex to come up in this part of the city way back in 1995, water is muddy. The association treats the bore water and supplies to the residents. There is no metro water supply to this sprawling area of Chennai, which is under the control of Ambattur Municipality. Residents' associations have to buy water through lorries by paying high premium to fill up their sumps.

Obviously, maintenance cost in these flats has gone up and residents, who already under severe stress due to prevailing high rent, have to bear the brunt of the additional water bill.

But again, who bothers? The city is growing leaps and bounds. But for the basic things like transport, water, power and roads, people have to struggle hard and compromise for substandard life style.

Thanks to people’s high degree of patience level, the corporation or municipality doesn’t even feel fit to improve the living condition of these residents.

As the say goes in Tamil, “Only crying kid gets the milk”; unless people voice their rights, nothing is going to change in our ‘Singara’ Chennai even after 50 years.