MANGALORE: Mangalore City Corporation, which is increasingly coming under fire over water supply, is now facing another problem — illegal connections.

Mangalore city, spread over 25 sq. km, has 66,000 water connections in what is called as the old Mangalore municipality area.

The corporation has 132 sq. km under its jurisdiction, and work on laying pipelines is in the last stages. Pipelines measuring 800 km will be used to cover the entire area.

The old pipeline covers the core area comprising 25 wards including the areas between Shivbagh-Mallikatta and Urva stores on the northern side, Hoige Bazaar and Kadri on the eastern side. On the southern side, it stretches up to Ullal.

Tremendous growth

The city has witnessed tremendous growth in the core area during the past 10 years.

But water supply has failed to match this growth with those living in interior areas complaining of water pilferage owing to illegal connections.

As a consequence, water supply to the end points has suffered and many areas including Dambel, Kodical, Kavoor, Bondel, Hoige Bazaar, Port Ward, parts of Pandeshwar and Jeppu report poor pressure, which has affected water supply.

The corporation constituted a committee sometime ago to go into the problems facing water supply. The Chairman of the committee and Mayor, Purandaradasa Kulur, admits that there are a large number of illegal water connections in the city, which is leading to pilferage of water.

However, the Executive Engineer of the corporation, Suresh Babu, says that it is unlikely that the city has a large number of illegal connections. The "Jala Bhagya" scheme of the corporation should be implemented in many wards, he adds. The scheme was introduced in 2002. Though a large number of connections were given under the scheme, they were not brought under the billing system.

The Commissioner of the corporation, V.S. Nayak, also allays fears of illegal connections.

Two connections

Former Mayor K. Diwakar, who has made a study of the city's water supply system, says that there are hotels and apartments that have taken more than two connections. But according to corporation rules there cannot be more than one connection for one door number.

But Mr. Babu notes that when there are 20 to 25 houses in an apartment complex, one connection may prove to be insufficient to meet the needs of all the people.

Hence, there are instances of two connections given to one apartment building.

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