SMC increases no. of water tankers to 75
Siliguri: To meet the ongoing drinking water crisis, the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) has increased the number of water tankers from 26 to 75 which have been sent to all 47 wards. From Friday morning, SMC increased the number of tanks in phases.
In the morning, 29 tanks were sent to various wards and by evening, the number was increased to 75.
The Public Health department (PHE) of the state government has installed mobile water treatment plants in five areas of Siliguri and its surroundings to supply packaged drinking water.
These plants have been processing and preparing water pouches. Each plant has been processing about 4,000 pouches per hour. With these plants, SMC has a target to supply more than 2 lakh water pouches to the citizens per day. “Till the night of May 30, we had supplied one lakh pouches to the public. On Friday, we distributed 2 lakh water pouches and are trying to distribute more.
We have also requested the Irrigation department to finish the dam repair work by June 1 so that we can supply purified water from Teesta River from the morning on June 2,” stated Gautam Deb the Mayor of Siliguri in a Press conference
on Friday.
After the announcement of contamination of the water supplied by SMC, panic ensued. Long queues were seen in front of shops selling packaged drinking water. Meanwhile, SMC also sent water tankers to different wards in rotation. There were long queues there as well.
SMC has arranged for 30 extra water tankers.
The others belong to the PHE. The mobile water treatment plants have come from Malda and Alipurduar. Water is being pumped from 10 deep tubewells. Construction of an alternative intake well will be completed by June 21, said the Mayor.
Meanwhile, on the heels of the CPI(M), the Congress and BJP also protested in front of the SMC office on Friday, which the Mayor condemned.
He said: “Why couldn’t the CPI(M)-led board make an alternative arrangement to meet the water crisis when they were in power for so many years? We are not responsible for the situation. All this is because of the mistakes made by the past boards.”
Meanwhile, the situation was much better on Friday after Thursday’s chaos.
“We have water sent to us by SMC, but we have to walk a long way to collect it,” said Rita Barman, a resident of Ward 33.
Another resident Soumen Nag said: “The Mayor himself came to our ward and distributed water pouches to us. We have been getting drinking water since Thursday.”
The information regarding where and when water tanks are available in which ward is given on the official website of SMC.