Water thefts, illegal connections and leakages amount to a loss of 700 million litres of water per day in the city out of its total daily supply of 3,200 mld.

“It will be a 24-hour helpline and will be setup on the premises of BMC headquarters. Complaints received from across the city will then be forwarded to the respective wards,” said additional municipal commissioner Anil Diggikar. The BMC has started work on the same and the toll-free number will be made public soon, Diggikar added.

The civic body’s move, however, met with staunch criticism from corporators at the standing committee meeting on Wednesday as they lamented that the corporation has many existing helplines but they are ineffective. “It is a welcome move, but we are not sure if the complaints received through the helpline will ever be looked into. Citizens keep complaining to us about the ineffectiveness of the existing helplines. What is the use of setting up new helplines when the existing ones are not functional?” asked BJP corporator Ashish Shelar said.

At present, complaints regarding water thefts and leakages can be made by calling the Vile Parle control room for western suburbs, Ghatkopar control room for eastern suburbs and Malabar Hill control room for complaints within the city. Complaints can also be made with the disaster management cell of the BMC on 108. “Citizens call repeatedly but their complaints are not redressed. Toll-free lines like 1916 have been a complete failure. If the administration really wants to curb thefts and leakages, they should make sure that complaints are attended to within 24 hours,” said Congress corporator Sameer Desai.

In September, the corporation had received about 2,200 complaints about leakages and 397 complaints regarding thefts from across the city. “The city has 25 per cent less water stock than its requirement at present. We will make sure that complaints received are looked in to,” said municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak.

BMC plans bore wells in buildings
After making rainwater harvesting compulsory in 2002, the BMC is now considering to make bore well mandatory for all existing and upcoming buildings. Civic standing committee chairman Ravindra Waikar said that in the wake of the water shortage, it is important for the city to make use of ground water for non-potable uses. “If each co-operative housing society can meet its needs of water for non-potable uses like gardening and cleaning by using water from bore wells it can ease the pressure off potable water,” Waikar said. However, Additional Municipal Commissioner Anil Diggikar said that excessive bore well digging can make the water brackish in nature. “Water tables can not be exploited beyond a certain limit. We will have to keep these factors in mind before a formal decision is made,” Diggikar said.

In October 2002, the BMC made it mandatory for all buildings having a plot area of 1000 square metres or more to have rainwater harvesting. In 2007, it was made compulsory for buildings with plot area of 300 square metres. The rainwater collected from roof tops can be stored in tanks or bore wells. However, till June 2009 only 900 buildings had actually implemented the plan due to lack of monitoring mechanism.