In the latest announcement, the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) has announced a 24-hour water shutdown due to maintenance and repair work followed by other work to be undertaken. Citing a few pending works to be conducted, the TMC has said that the interruption would occur on Friday and Saturday i.e., 19 January and 20 January.
According to Mumbai Live report, the civic body has cited some urgent works like maintenance and repair followed by the installation of motor control panels at the Temghar water treatment centre and connection to the main water channel under the Kalwa Ward Committee.
Thane Areas to be Hit by 24-hour Water Cut
The shutdown will reportedly take place from 9am on January 19 to 9am on January 20. This will affect areas like Ghodbunder Road, Vartak Nagar, Lokmanyanagar, Saket, Jail, Ritu Park, Gandhinagar, Rustamji, Indiranagar, Siddhachal, Srinagar, Rupadevi, Samtanagar, Siddheshwar, Johnson, Eternity, Mumbra and Kalwa.
Following the water shutdown, there is also a possibility of a low-pressure water supply in the areas for the next one to two days till the water supply returns to its normal state.
Going by the protocol, the civic body has once again appealed to citizens to keep adequate stock of drinking water and to cooperate with the municipal corporation.
Repeated Water Cuts in Maharashtra
This comes just a month after the Thane Municipal Corporation had declared another 24-hour water court in December, citing planned maintenance on STEM Authority’s water supply pipelines affecting areas like Ghodbunder Road, Patlipada, Pawar Nagar, Kothari Compound, Azad Nagar, Dongripada, Waghbil, and Saket among others.
The civic body had further planned to provide water supply only once a day in a staggered manner, also urging residents to store sufficient water and cooperate during the period.
Apart from Thane, the residents of Navi Mumbai‘s Dronagiri, Ulwe, JNPT, Kharghar, and other nodes and villages also faced similar concerns on two consecutive days earlier this month. With similar maintenance and repair work reasons, the water supply was kept closed on the 5th and 6th of January.
It is pertinent to note that the concerns regarding the lack of adequate water have been voiced by the residents multiple times on social media.
While the corporation continues to cut water supply citing maintenance works, despite receiving assurances from the civic bodies, locals believe that they have little to no regard for the plight of the residents struggling due to regular maintenance-related shutdowns.
On December 22, an ‘X’ user Sumit Narayane had posted, “It’s been two weeks and there is water cut in Dhokali area. We are only getting water for two-three hours per day.” He further wrote in Hindi and questioned Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde if he had forgotten his Thane after becoming the CM.
Another user, Rachna Cherodian, also lashed out at the state government and said that despite several promises of no water cut, Thane continues to witness such crisis.
Recently, some societies in Thane have curbed water supply like cutting water for three-four hours in a day. They claim that the supply from TMC has been low.
In 2022, thousand of residents from plush residential complexes in and around Ghodbunder Road and parts of Thane city were reportedly forced to spend an average Rs 15,000 a day for tankers and packaged drinking water.
The two-year-old report by Times of India had quoted its sources as saying that Thane city draws nearly 485 million litres of water daily from various sources, but an apparent faulty distribution system, riddled with leakages, leaves a section of the city to face water crisis frequently.
Even as water supply to households looks well above the national average of 135 litres per individual on paper, on the ground, many areas continue to face inadequate supply, the 2022 report had stated.
What to Do in Case of Long Water Cut?
Firstly, you can store adequate water as suggested by the municipal corporation. Another way is to check if your society is making any arrangement for water tankers or if you can arrange one yourself.
However, one must note that water tankers are often costly. In November last year, when residents of Ghodbunder road complexes and parts of Thane city faced water scarcity right after the monsoon, citizens claimed that they were forced to either rely on costly tanker water or packaged drinking water.
“Our society barely gets adequate water supply and the intermittent snag in the network further aggravates the problems leaving us without proper supply for the next two days at least. The tanker water supply is also erratic and costly. At times there have been complaints of possible contamination in tanker water which forces many to switch to bottled drinking water,” a resident of the GB road complex was quoted by Times of India last year.
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