KMDA starts installing water meters in bid to check wastage
Kolkata: Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), in collaboration with Madhyamgram municipality, has started installing water meters in households to check wastage of water.
Madhyamgram municipality has already installed water meter in around 2,000 households that fall under its 14 wards, under a pilot project, intending to determine the wastage of drinking water if there is any. All the other households too will get a water meter in the phased manner.
Madhyamgram municipality is the first civic body in the state, apart from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to come up with the unique idea which will eventually help the civic authorities to check the wastage of water. According to sources Rs 1.23 crore has already been spent for launching the project in Madhyamgram on a pilot basis.
Currently, a total of 28 wards fall under the Madhyamgram municipality out of which nearly 14 wards have received the water meters. The civic body supplies water to around 36,000 households daily. The Paniyara water treatment plant in Madhyamgram which was commissioned in 2016, supplies 35 million litres of purified drinking water to 14 wards daily while the rest of the wards get water supply through bored wells. Paniyara water treatment plant also supplies drinking water to other civic bodies like Barasat and Madhyamgram. It supplies a total of 140 million litres of purified drinking water to these municipalities per day.
The water meters installed in the wards have been named as 'complete automatic reader system' which will give an account to the civic authorities about the areas where the drinking water is being wasted. It will also determine the quantity of water being used by each household.
Rathin Ghosh, Chairman of the Madhyamgram municipality and the local MLA said: "There is no parity between the generation and the demands of water in the area. The process of installing water meter has been started on a pilot basis to bridge the gap and put in place a water loss management system. One of the main purposes is to address the key issue of wastage of drinking water."
People in various wards of Madhyamgram have also expressed their happiness and thanked the municipal chairman for staring such a project.
Pranab Dutta, a resident of Madhyamgram said: "It's a great move by the civic authorities to check water loss. People often tend to be forgetful to turn off the taps resulting in wastage of drinking water. Accountability should be fixed on those who indulge in such activities. We hail the move by the municipality."
