Pune: Residents from different parts of the city are irked over interruptions in as well as low-pressure water supply since last week. Many said there was very little improvement in supply after last week’s day-long closure. The main complaints pertain to low pressure and water supply for fewer hours. Complaints were raised in areas including Kalas, Dhanori, Lohegaon, some parts of Bavdhan, Pashan, and pockets of Shivajinagar, Hadapsar, areas around Kondhwa, and NIBM Road. Several newly elected corporators from the different areas also affirmed that they received complaints from citizens over these interruptions. A corporator from the Sus area said that in a meeting held early this week, residents raised complaints about civic services in general — of these, the maximum were about water supply. NCP leader of the party’s group in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Nilesh Nikam, said that the general body will start functioning from next week. “We will raise all the issues pertaining to water supply in the general body. We will seek clarification from the civic administration in the meeting. We often get replies from the administration that the supply gets hampered because of faults in the pipelines. The authorities should explain whether their teams check the pipeline network regularly or not,” Nikam said. A corporator from the Bavdhan-Bhusari Colony area, Archana Warpe, said that the supply was very erratic last week. It improved a little, but citizens are not happy about the low pressure supply in their taps. Shivajinagar resident Ashish Gosavi said, “Water supply has been erratic for the last two weeks. It worsened after the day-long closure announced by PMC on Feb 5. The supply was supposed to be normalized by Feb 6, but restoration was not done properly, which led to hardships. All this is forcing citizens to spend on tankers.” Dhananjay Benkar, an activist and resident of Dhayari-Narhe, said that the water supply situation in merged areas is particularly concerning. “Housing societies call water tankers daily to meet basic water requirements. Spending on tankers is in lakhs per week. Citizens are not getting adequate water; besides, there are no checks on the quality of water being supplied by tankers either,” he pointed out. PMC had taken up repairs of its pipeline in Kalas , but the work was not finished due to technical challenges, said civic officials. They added that pipelines in some areas developed problems after the day-long closure, hampering overall supply. Local teams were asked to maintain adequate water pressure in distribution lines to address the shortages. A senior official from PMC’s water supply department told TOI, “Repairs to pipelines were finished at most locations. The low-pressure problems arise mainly because of some local issues, such as obstacles in water flow or air pressure. Our engineers will deal with low-pressure issues. We are taking feedback from the local units.” 
