BWSSB

Singapore

water

Dhaka

Bangladesh

Currently, 1,350 million litre of water is being supplied to the city every day, of which 37.59% goes to waste ­ –Tushar Girinath, BWSSB chairperson

By Amit KumarCrippled by thefts, old pipes,will need till 2050 to bring leaks down to 4-5%Bengaluru is often compared to, but turns out when it comes to checkingpilferage and leakage, the city is not close even toBWSSB chairman Tushar Girinath said Bengaluru may have to wait for three more decades to fix the problem. “Dhaka, the capital of, and Singapore are giving their people well-planned administration. Water leakages in those cities are down to 4 – 5%, whereas Bengaluru has a leakage of 37.59%. We can bring it down to 5% only by 2050.”Speaking at the VK Phone in programme, Girinath said, “Even London is struggling to prevent the water leakage problem. BWSSB has a capacity of supplying 1,400 million litres of Cauvery water to the city every day. Currently, 1,350 million litre of water is being supplied every day, of which, 37.59% of water is going waste due to leakage. We are working towards controlling leakage, and hope to bring it down by .25% by the end of 2030.”So if you are wondering why the IT city of the country is struggling to check water leakage, the reasons are plain to see.BWSSB spends more than Rs 10 lakh daily to pump drinking water to the city. Drinking water is supplied to the city from centres located in T K Halli, Tathaguni, Harohalli and others. These water supply centres are very far from the cities so to bring the water in without any losses is a big challenge for the water board. Another reason is that the pipelines are old and rusted. This has caused severe leakage in recent times.BWSSB plans to replace the old pipelines with new.Leakage also happens as people are taking illegal connections by hoodwinking BWSSB officials.So officials are not able to maintain a proper account of the amount of water being supplied to the city. There are 7,000 illegal connections in the city and of these, 5,000 have been disconnected.