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BWSSB emulating the Mysore example?
Written By murali772 - 16 February, 2011
Bangalore BWSSB Media Reports efficiency outsourcing water supply JUSCO
BWSSB is going for a complete overhaul of its pipelines to check water leakage; 60,000 of the 1.05 lakh water meters in Bangalore South will be replaced; 145 km length of pipelines will be replaced for this pilot project. The target is to bring down the leakage from the current 36% to 16%. Work will begin in three months. The total project cost is Rs174 crore and would be awarded to the lowest bidders, who are L&T, SE-SPL, JUSCO, Veolia Water, Manila Water and GVPR Engineers. The contractor will be given three years to implement and three years to operate and maintain the work. The chairman assured of no additional charges being passed on to the consumers.
Once the project proves to be successful, it will be extended to all six zones of the city. Also, as a separate programme for non-revenue water, four NGOs have been roped in to provide individual sanitary connections to 120 slums in the city so that the water going to these localities can be accounted for too. The NGOs that will work with BWSSB are Mythri Sarva Seva, New entity for Social action, India Community Service Society and Mahatma Gandhi Trust.
For the full report in the DNA, click here
From a reading of the report, the impression one gets is that there's an overall appreciation that the way forward is the one shown by the Mysore city, in the form of its deal with JUSCO (check this), and that is now sought to be replicted in other cities too - namma Bengaluru, to begin with. This certainly a welcome development. And, the move to work with NGOs for the connections in slums seems the right thing to do too. Hopefully, they have been selected on the basis of their crdibility.
Perhaps, we in PRAJA could track these works closely, like we have been doing with Namma Metro.
Muralidhar Rao
COMMENTS
It is not tradable only according to those who have it
shekhar_mittal - 19 February, 2011 - 13:12
Many ppl say that water is not tradable, or education should not be profitable. But who are these ppl? Arent these the same ppl who hav water available to them and send their kids to private schools?
Has any one ever asked the poor? Do the poor really care whether they get water and education from the govt or from some pvt party? Chances are that they are dependent on pvt players newas.
idontspam - 16 February, 2011 - 09:12
RIP Bangalore south roads for the next 3 years and then a permenant state of disrepair from then on
murali772 - 17 February, 2011 - 05:56
A response on "SaveKoramangala Y-group" to my posting of a link to thre deabte
I had an insight into the Government thinking on water yesterday at the Major water resources minister Mr Basavraj Bommai's office, where I had gone for a meeting. The minister asked a question to Sriram Vedire, a national figure in the water movement ... is water tradable, and our reply was that as a common, it was not, and even this year's nobel in economics went to Dr Elenor on the same fundamentals.
He came back saying that we were absolutely right that water is not tradeable, but only water services are tradeable. Perhaps this is the framework in which the governement wants to take it forward - have well serviced water on both the potable and reuse fronts.
regards, R
Further exchanges on SK Y-group
murali772 - 21 February, 2011 - 14:17
VM wrote:
U can rest assured that the opposition to this "privatisation" will not come from a minister or even politicians at large.
There does exist a bunch of perhaps well meaning but misinformed water activists, who will fight tooth and nail, to what they would call, "Big corporate-government nexus", "world bank agendas", and a misrepresentation of water services privatisation as selling the source itself.
To their credit however, there are any number of instances on the global front where these excercises in privatisation have not yielded the desired results, and governments have taken back the water supply. In India however, the issue is of non performing government bodies in basic services, and with no hope (as i see it), to it ever changing with our current labour laws and bureaucracy insulation against non performance.
it is perhaps time for a more modern and moderate mindset amongst a section of civil society to look, demand and facilitate end deliveries rather than get caught in Philosophical and ideological posturing.
I responded:
It is perhaps true that most water-supply upgradation schemes tried out in the past (not in India) had ended up in total privatisation, and, driven by the short-term profit maximising objective of the service providers taking advantage of the 'natural monopoly' nature of the service, led to unfair cost escalations. But, the reasons for the municipalities not wanting to continue providing the service themselves, in the first place, hadn't disappeared at all. Not quite appreciating this, some municipalities had apparently reverted to undertaking it themselves, and are now inevitably set to re-invent the wheel, after putting the citizens to a lot of hardships, in the process.
Not just water supply, as per the provisions of the 74th amendment, municipalities in India are now required to be responsible for power supply, public bus transport services, traffic policing, etc, in additions to the myriad functions they have already been (mis)-handling so far. And, no municipality anywhere in the world can claim to have the capacity to manage all of them by itself.
In namma Bengaluru, inspite of the portfolio being handled by BWSSB, suppossedly a specialised parastatal agency, the situation is quite dismal, with well over 40% of the water pumped from far off Cauvery, not being accounted for, apart from even the rest getting contaminated by sewage, now and then. The inevitable answer is outsourcing. And, here we have a model in the Mysore City - JUSCO deal, which, with some tweaking based on the learnings from the present phase of execution in its third year, could perhaps provide the right answer. What's required in addition of course is an effective overseeing mechanism, perhaps in the form of a duly constituted regulatory authority, with jurisdiction over the entire state.
Whatever, saying no to anything and everything is playing straight into the hands of the well-entrenched lobby formed of the water-tanker and bore-well industry, in collusion with the BWSSB mafia.
This subject, as well related ones (including the ideological issues involved), have already been discussed at length on PRAJA.
murali772 - 13 September, 2011 - 08:54
Here is Mr Ramamurthy (BWSSB Chairman)'s response to my question as to why Bangalore is not following the Mysore lead of engaging JUSCO to help reduce UFW (unaccounted for water). After admitting at the very beginning that the UFW for Bangalore is at an unconscionable 32 to 38%, here he goes on to divert the subject to non-availability of bulk water (as compared to Mysore) for offering 24 X 7 supply. The fact of the JUSCO deal targeting reduction of UFW to a more acceptable level of 15% is conveniently overlooked.
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