123Pune.com

Pune, April 28: The month of May will see the sale of water in the fringe areas of the city peak, with Rs 4 crore worth of water getting sold in the localities of Katraj, Dhankawadi, Wadgaonsheri and Bibvewadi. Thus, one month will account for almost 60 per cent of the entire year’s business that is valued at around Rs 7 crore.

Even with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) making an annual provision of approximately Rs 3 crore for plying around 400 water tankers, there is still scope for about 600 private water tankers plying each day as water scarcity peaks during summer. These tankers with up to 8,000-litre carrying capacity make 5-7 trips a day in most areas.

While the PMC tankers, that draw water from the civic water works, come free of cost, the massive demand-supply gap has ensured much space for the private tanker operators who draw water mostly from private-owned wells. They pay Rs 50 a tanker to the farmers who own these wells but the selling rate starts at Rs 250 and goes all the way up to Rs 500, depending on demand.

“Even after repeated request we don’t get tankers from the PMC, unless of course we bribe the drivers each trip” says Rukmini Puranik, a resident of Dhankawadi. “Often the water supplied by PMC is muddy, but I cant afford the private tankers” she adds. There are thousands in the city fringe like Puranik, who prefer the Rs 100 a tanker bribe to the costlier option that private tankers provide.

PMC officials prefer not to meddle in the water business that has many local politicians involved neck-deep in it. “The PMC floats tenders to hire water tankers on contract but it is often politicians who own the tankers,” said a PMC official who preferred not to be named. Clearly, not many politicians have tankers registered in their own names but in the names of relatives and friends.

PMC Standing Committee chairman Bapu Pathare would like to assure Puneites that the water supply situation will improve in a few years as new water supply projects get completed. Interestingly, Pathare is one of the politicians whose name is openly associated with water business. Pathare, though, denies it.

“I admit, in Kharadi my relatives are in the tanker business but there is not a single tanker in my name,” says Pathare. He has vowed to prove his innocence by making Pune tanker-free before his term ends.

Promises of making Pune a ‘tanker-free’ city is nothing new. “Many such announcements were made earlier by politicians. But the ground reality has remained the same,” said a local businessman who is into the lucrative business of plying water tankers, who is convinced that his business will continue for a few more years.

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