R.T. Nagar residents desperately wait for Kabini water

Mysore/Mysuru: With no near sight of getting Kabini river water, the wait of residents of R.T. Nagar (Ravindranath Tagore Nagar) seems to be only getting longer, with authorities and elected representatives failing to keep their promise.

After forming the much awaited R.T. Nagar Layout, the MUDA allotted sites to applicants in 2017. Soon after the allotment ended, some of the site owners started construction of houses and about 45 houses came up in the locality in a short period. But as the Layout lacked civic amenities, the residents are feeling the pinch and are crying for drinking water, which has eluded them all these years.

H.S. Sripada Rao, a resident of the locality, said that he constructed his house spending lakhs or rupees and now, with lack of drinking water, he feels that living in a rented house would have been much better. 

Maintaining that every household in the locality have to pay water Bills up to Rs. 1,200 which are issued based on Commercial category rates, he said that they are receiving power bills to the tune of Rs. 4,000 a month, which is very high compared to rest of the areas.

Srinivas, another resident, said that the authorities were supplying water through water tank vehicles once in a week, he claimed that this quantity of water was not enough for a family of four or five to last for a week. With shortfall in water supplies, he is left wondering on how to arrange money for additional supplies of water, he noted.

Sumana, another resident, said that miscreants are causing problems in the locality.

Contending that miscreants gather in groups at vacant sites, which are many in the area, soon after sunset, she argued that this has caused scare among the residents of the locality.

Rajesh, President of R.T. Nagar Residents Welfare Association, said that the link works that aims to supply Kabini water to the locality has been completed. But what remains to be done is that water must be pumped to the Overhead tank, from where piped water can be supplied to homes, he pointed out. 

Maintaining that only electric poles have been installed and overhead cabling works has been kept pending for long, he said that with now proper connection, it has become difficult for pumping water to the over head tank and this is the root cause for the drinking water problem in the locality.

Nobody in the locality knows when their grievances, which have remained unattended ever since the formation of the layout, are suitably addressed by the authorities, he added.