Chennai: With the mercury level rising with each passing day, water level across the city is decreasing day by day and the city stares at a massive water scarcity.
In areas like RA Puram, Alwarpet and Mylapore, the residents have already started feeling the brunt of water shortage with drop in groundwater level and have already started looking at other options to get water.
In the slums near RA Puram, people have started facing water shortage and at Raja Muthiah Puram, for the last few months people are dependent on the Metro Water lorries. “People here are desperate for water and the whole colony here depends on the metrowater lorries. We had to depend on it everyday and since most of the women here are working as cooks or housemaids in other households, it is becoming difficult to go to work on time,” says Selvi, a housemaid.
People here also complain that the lorries come at an erratic time without following a proper schedule that creates confusion, “If it comes at a fixed we can manage but we don’t even know when it will come and one person had to be at home always to fetch the water when the tanker arrives. We can’t afford to miss it as we may end up having no water even to meet our daily needs,” she adds.
If people in the slums are put to test, people living outside it too are not able to manage the crisis. At Krishnapuri, in RA Puram, residents face similar situation as the well water has gone dry and ground water may soon become unavailable.
Speaking about the situation, Lakshman Rao, a resident of the area says, “We have not faced this kind of a water shortage in the recent past. With monsoon failure the situation has become worse. Some seven years ago, we faced water scarcity and the corporation constructed common tanks in our street from which we were able to fetch water. This year the corporation officials surveyed the locality and said that similar kind of tanks will be set up soon but they haven’t done it yet.”
“In such a scenario if the corporation build such tanks then the residents can atleast get some water for their needs,” he added.
K Ram, a resident of Alwarpet says that “Ever since the water shortage in my home last week, I have dug a new borewell as deep as 600 feet and manage to get some water but people who have open wells in the locality say that their wells are too getting dried up and I fear the water may go even down. With this acute shortage, I feel that it is us who brought us to this situation. Had we done rainwater harvesting atleast the underwater level or the water in the well would have sustained but without doing it we are now pushed to face the brunt,” he concluded.