Zakirnagar has started receiving four hours of non-stop water supply, as a part of the ambitious project, since Thursday. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Mango’s piped dream is slowly turning into reality.

Officials of drinking water and sanitation department have a reason to cheer. They have been successful in supplying water for continuous four hours without any glitch to Zakirnagar, one of the densely populated pockets of Jamshedpur, under the Rs 64.18-crore Mango drinking water project.

Though trial runs began in the locality, having a population of nearly 50,000, in the beginning of this month with water being supplied for about an hour, non-stop supply for four hours started from 3pm on Thursday.

The authorities are now hoping that they will be able to start full-fledged operations in entire Mango by June-end.

“We decided to supply water to individual households at Zakirnagar from tower No. 6 on Purulia Road from yesterday (Thursday) evening. We did not receive any complaint and those who had taken connections under the new project are happy with the force of water. No snag has been reported from any house so far. We hope to start full-fledged supply of water by the end of next month,” said the executive engineer of drinking water and sanitation department, Adityapur circle, Pradeep Choudhary.

He added that trial runs of water supply from five out of the six towers were being conducted in various localities since April.

The residents of Zakirnagar could not believe their eyes when they saw water pouring out in full force from taps. Mukhtar Alam, a Tata Steel employee and resident of Roop Colony, said he was pleasantly surprised.

“We had taken water connection from the new pipelines laid as part of the Mango water project. All of a sudden, my daughter informed me around 3pm yesterday (Thursday) that water was coming out from the tap. Water was coming out in full force, something we had not seen in more than a decade,” said Alam.

He said earlier, they used to depend on tube wells for their water need as the community taps in the market had erratic supply.

The much-touted Mango project, which is being executed by Jusco, a wholly owned Tata Steel subsidiary, is adding five water towers in addition to an existing one, a new modernised water treatment plant and an intake reservoir on the banks of Subernarekha with a capacity to supply 48 million litres of water per day for next 24 years.

However, the project has missed a number of deadlines. The initial completion date was August 2011. Since then, it has failed to meet five deadlines — December 2011, September 2012, December 2012, January 2013 and April 2013.

Sources at the drinking water department said barring minor civil works at the water tower near MGM Medical College at Dimna and horizontal pipe laying work near NH-33 at Dimna Square, construction of other infrastructure is complete.

“Installation of a pipeline for drawing water is currently on at the tower near MGM Medical College. The work of horizontal pipe laying is nearly 70 per cent complete. We hope to complete it by mid-June and start a trial of supplying water to houses near Dimna and adjoining localities,” said the source.

According to Mango Notified Area Committee’s special officer Neeraj Srivastava, out of 30,000 registered households of Mango, 2,600 have taken water connection so far.