Wait continues

Nov. 15: Like the taps in Diphu, the Congress-led Karbi Anglong District Autonomous Council’s promise to provide potable water to 11,271 households have also run dry.

After spending Rs 4.5 crore on two water supply projects, the autonomous council’s public health engineering (PHE) department has yet to end the drinking water crisis in the district headquarters.

Almost immediately after taking charge in 2005,the Khorsing Ingti-led autonomous council declared that the decades-long crisis would soon be a thing of the past. The promise seemed a practical one, given the fact that Delhi had by then given technical clearance to the plan to stock 50 million litres of water per hour for distribution among 63,000 households in Diphu town.

Work on the project began in February 2006 and the PHE department announced that the project would be a Republic Day gift to Diphu this year. An ongoing departmental inquiry has now revealed that funds to the tune of Rs 80 lakh were misappropriated.

“We are conducting an internal inquiry into the utilisation of a huge amount as officials of the department are not authorised to divert money received from the Non-Lapsable Fund. Right now the departmental coffers are empty. Most of the contractors who were engaged for the first phase of work have yet to receive payments against their bills,” an official said.

A source in the PHE department blamed “technical faults” for the failure of the project. “People were optimistic about the crisis ending when the autonomous council announced that project would become operational on January 26 this year. Alas, that was not meant to be.”

At present, the PHE department receives only a few thousand litres of water everyday from its Binapani plant.

Much of the Rs 4.5-crore project remains incomplete, including the plan to renovate the lifting system from Jamuna river to the Binapani treatment plant, upgrade the treatment plant and lay a network of pipes from the treatment plant to the reservoir in Diphu.

The Manja-based Binapani treatment plant has a capacity of eight million litres per day.