Safety Audit gaps in Ghy water supply project

The heart-wrenching incident of a water pipe bursting in the Kharghuli area of Guwahati, leaving a woman dead and several residents injured, besides damaging houses and other properties, is seen by different quarters as the result of criminal negligence towards public safety. The incident exposed the yawning gap in safety audits of the city water supply project due to a lack of required supervision by officials concerned. Rigorous supervision could have helped avert the incident. As a similar water pipe network has been laid all over the city and has already been commissioned in some areas, the incident calls for an immediate and comprehensive third-party safety audit in the entire city to ensure that such incidents do not recur. The government has announced a probe into the incident. The probe panel will fix accountability on erring supervising officials and contractors whose callousness led to the man-made disaster. It will be important to send a stern message to all implementing agencies and officials, government as well as private, in respect of all mega projects to ensure that public safety is not compromised under any circumstances. With no officials reaching the incident spot for hours together, this also points towards the Assam State Disaster Management Authority not putting in place an effective disaster-response protocol for rescue operations in the event of the bursting of a large water pipe passing through thickly populated city areas. Lessons learned from the incident and vulnerability of large water pipes and reservoirs on the city hills established for water supply projects from a disaster perspective need to be incorporated in the Disaster Management Plan of Kamrup (Metropolitan) district. City residents have the right to know the response plan in the event of a water reservoir atop the hills in the event of a disaster. It will ensure routine vulnerability assessment in pre-disaster planning undertaken by the ASDMA based on assessments by the District Disaster Management Authority and initiate mitigation measures accordingly. Another safety assessment relating to water reservoirs and large water pipe networks that needs to be undertaken on a priority basis is the possible landslide risk at the project sites. As construction of the reservoir and the laying of the pipes led to the cutting up of the hills and the removal of greenery, undertaking an assessment of the hill slopes for their stability post-construction work is essential to ruling out possible landslide risk and undertaking mitigation measures to reduce vulnerabilities. The incident being a result of human negligence on the part of contracting parties implementing the project, damage caused to houses and household properties cannot be limited to the compensation stipulated in the relief manual of the ASDMA in respect of notified natural disasters like flood, fire, earthquake, erosion, etc. and must be adequate to compensate the losses and help the affected rebuild their lives. However, a proper vulnerability assessment of the damaged houses to ascertain if retrofitting solutions would be safe or reconstruction would be required needs to be taken into account while deciding the quantum of compensation. The affected families are entitled to proper shelter, food, and other essentials to be provided by the authorities until the rehabilitation process is completed. The disaster also laid bare the casual approach towards finding a permanent solution to the problem of safe and potable water in the capital city, which led to an unjustified delay in the commissioning of the water supply projects for the entire city. Partial commissioning of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)-assisted Guwahati Water Supply project in December last year brought respite to residents of some localities, but large areas of the city are still not supplied with potable water, and most residents in these areas are compelled to purchase water supplied by private water tankers or dependent on bore wells dug a long time ago, with some wells reportedly drying up due to falling water tables. Ironically, the project was started in 2009, and long delays have resulted in a cost overrun, which is nothing but a plundering of tax payers’ money that will go into servicing the soft loan provided by JICA for funding it. Expediting the project after long years of delay cannot be at the cost of the safety of residents. While meeting the new target date of completion of March 2024 is essential to ending the water woes of city residents, project authorities must put in place a robust and transparent mechanism to ensure that the safety of the pipe network and water reservoirs is ensured round the clock and does not pose any risk to the lives and properties of the city residents. If the safety aspect is ignored, it runs the risk of compounding disaster-related damage in the event of a pipe burst occurring during heavy monsoon rains, which aggravate landslide risks on city hills, or during an earthquake. The demand for transparency in city water supply projects, including transparency relating to safety audits, is legitimate and deserves a favourable response from the authorities concerned.