Berhampur: Drinking water crisis in Berhampur is likely to worsen in the coming days as the water ATMs worth lakhs in the municipality region have been lying dysfunctional for the last ten months, thanks to the substandard work and apathy of authorities concerned.
To provide drinking water to the denizens here and people coming from outside the district, especially in summer season, the Berhampur Municipality Corporation (BeMC) has installed three water ATMs in the city.
Even though we have been requesting the BeMC to make functional the water ATMs, the departmental officers have lent a deaf ear to our calls, alleged locals.
A private firm named Delta Pure was awarded the tender to install and maintain the three water ATMs on a public-private partnership (PPP) mode in the civic area.
The water ATMs were installed at three areas namely— Arnapurna Bazaar, and at two Aahar Centres; one near Old Bus Station and another near Railway Station.
Modern technology has been employed in the three water ATMs to purify the water. The four stages of purification involve two stages of micro filtration through carbon particles, one layer of membrane filtration through reverse osmosis and ultra-violate purification. This will finally purify the water.
Thick stainless steel containers are used to transport the purified water. The water is treated before filling the ATMs to ensure that citizens get best quality drinking water. Water treatment plants have also been installed to cater to the needs of water vending machines.
The machine at Arnapurna market has the capacity to purify 300 litres of water while the machines near Old Bus Stand and Railway Station can purify 250 litres of water each.
The administration had spent Rs13.8 lakh for the one at Arnapurna market and Rs11 lakh each for the remaining ones.
People do drink water from the machines by using smart cards.
Everyday thousands of people visit this town for both tourism and medical purpose (MKCG). Visitors to the city said that they are experiencing difficulties to get even a drop of water to quench their thirst.
When asked BeMC Commissioner Chakravarti Singh Rathore, replied that we have informed Delta Pure Company about the defunct water ATMs.
As per the company’s statement— “Some parts of those water ATMs are defunct. By this time we would have repaired those defunct water ATMs but the parts required to make those out-of-order ATMs functional are to be brought from China. However, we are not able to bring those parts owing to COVID-19.”
