SYLHET, July 7: The inhabitants of Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) have long been suffering much for pure drinking water as the much-desired water supply project is yet to be completed.
Presently, about 30 million litre water is being supplied through the age-old system at the city's Topkhana pump house and the 30 production wells against the demand of 80 million litre per day, informed the Chief Engineer of the SCC Nur Azizur Rahman Monday.
'Normally we can't supply 50 per cent of the demand'. Moreover, the crisis gets deepened due to frequent power failure and the production pumps often go out of order. However, the newly established water treatment plant would help meeting the demand within months, he added.
The Tk 1320 million project is nearing completion, the official said and added, hopefully in months it will be OK and the crisis would be resolved.
However, a number of city dwellers expressed their annoyance as the project, taken up 9 years back remained incomplete as yet. Although the water treatment plant, established at the city suburban Kushighat area was put on test operation last year, it is yet to be made totally operative causing great sufferings for the people.
'If the authority fails to start water supply from the new treatment plant in a month, there would be a mass outburst as it had been deferred time and again', said Abu Taher, president of the Sylhet Kolyan Sangstha, a non-political social forum of Sylhet.
'The authority had promised several times about the start of water supply from the treatment plant in recent years', said trader at the city's Mohajonpatti area, Anwarul Haque adding, we can't trust them.
Contacted, executive engineer of the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Mohammad Hanif, however, told this correspondent yesterday most of the works on the Tk 1320 million project is finished. We had suffered much in installing the pipeline on some areas for different reasons in the last year. Hopefully pipeline installation and its river crossing for connecting the 3 wards in the city corporation areas would take maximum 2 months more, the official added.
The much-desired project styled 'Water Supply, Sanitation and Drainage System Development' was taken up for Sylhet city areas in 2006-2007 with a targeted expenditure of Tk 490 million. But, due to delay in implementation, delay in land acquisition for the plant, rise in the price of imported materials and expansion of the project areas, the project cost was revised several times.
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