Pune: Puneites get ready to face water cuts as the Pune Municipal Corporation is all set to announce water cuts on Thursday. The civic administration and irrigation department officials held a meeting on Wednesday in which it has been decided that water cuts for Pune city are inevitable.
However, the formal announcement of the water cuts for the city will be made on Thursday after the meeting of all party leaders in PMC. The debate on whether to go for 10 percent to 20 percent water cut is likely to take place in the party leaders’ meeting on Wednesday.
The PMC commissioner, Vikas Deshmukh, admitted that the water situation in the city is going from bad to worse. He said, “we have to take some stern steps to conserve water. We have taken a review of the present water situation of dams which supply water to Pune. At present, there is 1.96 TMC water available which is very less. The irrigation department has also stopped the released of the water for Palkhi. Considering the loss due to evaporation, the city will have 1.80 TMC water available. Last year, around this time there was 5.13 TMC water available.”
Last week, the deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar had hinted that if the city does not get good rain, the civic administration will have to consider about imposing water cuts in order to manage the existing water supply for longer duration. Pawar had asked civic administration and irrigation department to take a review of the water situation on Wednesday.
According to the officials of PMC, the water cuts for the city are inevitable but the civic administration does not want to take decision on its own and therefore it has put the ball in elected members court.
“I cannot comment on the water cuts. The decision will be taken only after the meeting of party leaders,” Deshmukh said.
Deshmukh has made it clear that the administration will be conducting inspections of the construction activities to make sure that the drinking water is not used for construction. “Our staff will be inspecting such sites. The projects where drinking water is being used will be issued ‘stop work order’ immediately. We are going to provide additional staff to ward offices for inspection,” he said.
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