Road digging blows a hole in Siruvani water line

In the latest of a series of such incidents, telephone cable-laying work damaged a Siruvani drinking water supply line on Alagesan Road at Saibaba Colony in the city on Thursday, leading to a pool of water stagnating in that area.The Coimbatore Corporation said that despite the best of its efforts to prevent line bursts, digging without knowing the location of the water lines continued across the city.

Many a time, this had been pointed out to both government and private telecom service providers. But, there was no respite from the problem, the civic body said.An anguished resident on Alagesan Road, P.K. Ramachandran, pointed out that the local contractors to whom the pit digging work had been awarded had no sense of responsibility while going about this task.

All they seemed to be bothered about was to finish the job of digging trenches for the telephone cables to be laid. Damaged to water lines in the process seemed to be considered inconsequential.“These people should coordinate with the local Corporation officials in order to avoid damage to water lines,” he said.

Mayor R. Venkatachalam agreed with this point. He said the contractor in-charge of the work should coordinate with the Corporation’s junior engineer in charge of the Ward. “But, this is not happening,” he lamented. The workers who dug the trenches would not know the location of the water line.Only the Corporation official in-charge of supply would know, he pointed out.At the same time, the engineers too should be proactive enough to maintain a vigil because these instances are on the rise,” the Mayor said. “But, despite our call for this, there is not enough vigil to prevent this problem. It is not enough to react only after the Mayor or the Commissioner issues an order after a water line has been damaged,” he said.

Mr. Ramachandran sought to remind the telecom service providers and the Corporation that what happened on Thursday was not an isolated incident, but had already assumed epidemic proportions at Saibaba Colony and elsewhere in the city.“A lot of water is wasted before the leak is plugged. Adding to the damage is the delay in stopping the pumping of water,” he said. Mr. Ramachandran also pointed out that the restoration of the road after laying the cables was haphazard.The Mayor said a permanent solution lay in providing ducts for all cables.

This would eliminate the need to dig the road.

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