The repaired pipelines near the Kadma community centre and at a school in Shastrinagar on Thursday. Pictures by Bhola Prasad

It was not its job, but it deemed it as its duty. Meet Jamshedpur’s summer Samaritan Jusco — the wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Steel — which has repaired a damaged pipeline in Kadma that was installed and is maintained by the state drinking water and sanitation department.

The utility company, which recently floated 24x7 helplines to make every drop count, has also plugged another leak in Shastrinagar and is conducting a thorough survey of its command areas to prevent wasting of water.

Jusco’s prompt actions came on Wednesday. On March 24, The Telegraph had highlighted how a cracked pipe near Ramdas Bhatta Community Centre in Kadma was flooding the road. A resident of Shastrinagar Block No. 4, while speaking to The Telegraph the same day (report published on March 25), bared another leak in the backyard of the local Adarsh Madhya Vidyalaya.

Around noon on Wednesday, a small army of five civic workers from Jusco marched to Kadma and after four hours of toil, repaired the sanitation department’s pipeline.

Later in the evening, a dwarf contingent of three workers took charge in Shastrinagar. They went hoe, wrench and tape for two hours from 7pm to salvage the supply to the school that was going down the drain for several days.

Jusco spokesperson Rajesh Rajan said that though the water pipeline in front of the community centre belonged to the state drinking water and sanitation department, they plugged the problem to save the natural resource.

“It cost us around Rs 20,000 to repair the 10-inch pipeline, which had cracked due to digging on the road. Had we ignored the problem and waited for the government to repair the damage, litres of the precious lifeline would have gone waste,” he said, adding that the leak at Adarsh Madhya Vidyalaya was plugged for Rs 3,000.

Extending its campaign, the water management department of Jusco has intensified survey work in various localities to repair leaks.

“We have detected some damaged underground pipelines in Shastrinagar and have started work on a war footing to. Surveys are being carried out in other areas too and any complaint — telephonic or otherwise — is being attended to immediately,” Rajan said.

Notably, Jusco supplies 170 million litres of potable water every day in its command areas in the steel city and is aiming to bring down water wastage to 10 per cent from the current 15 per cent.

“We have set us this target in accordance with world water supply standards and are constantly carrying out campaigns to bring down wastage. We have been successful to an extent. Three years ago, 25 per cent of the water supplied was wasted because of leaks and other reasons. Now, the figure is 15 per cent. We are upgrading our supply system to bring down the percentage to 10,” the Jusco spokesperson added.