The state-owned Heavy Engineering Corporation has decided to handover its entire water supply distribution system to the management of Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMCH).
The 50-year-old Hatia dam constructed by the Bihar government was designed to supply water to the residents of Ranchi. When the plant of the HEC started production in 1964, it became the consumer of the state government agency to draw water from the Hatia dam water distribution system with water charges to the state government..
The state-run PsU (HEC) had gradually established trunk line net works in the HEC township to supply water to the residents of the HEC employees/ different agencies and private industrial outfits.
Director (Personnel), HEC S Banerjee told Business Standard that a team of HEC officials recently met the RMC chief executive officer, Vinay Chaubey and requested him to take over the water distribution system of Hatia dam in HEC as the PsU was unable to pay the enhanced rate of water charge from Rs 12 lakh per month to Rs 72 lakh per month fixed by the state’s drinking water and sanitation department (DWS).
According to a source, the DWS of the Jharkhand government drastically increased the rate of water charge from Rs 8 per 1,000 gallon to Rs 45-50 per 1,000 gallon that resulted an extra burden on the HEC.
Director said that RMC chief executive officer had expressed positive response to HEC’s proposal and asked HEC officials to submit the proposal in writing.
Director (Personnel) said that HEC was preparing a detailed report on the water distribution system in HEC to place it to RMC within next month.
When asked how much cost HEC would demand from RMC to handover the properties of existing water supply distribution system, HEC director replied that RMC would get an established water supply project and it must be taken into account that if the project was set up now, what would have been the cost to build it at the current market price.
Banerjee said that total trunk line of HEC’s water supply project was of the order of 75 km that had been laid with cast iron pipes and the last mile connectivity of the project was 260 km that had been laid with the GI pipes.
He expected that RMC would offer a reasonable price to HEC for acquiring the water supply network from HEC.
