An alarming piece of news carried in this daily yesterday shows how exposed public health is even to a utility service in this city. A locality in Hazaribagh gets water supplied by the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) all right, but it is the last thing that the residents there wanted. So contaminated is the water that comes through the faucets that it is virtually unusable for any domestic purpose. The residents of that locality are forced to purchase their drinking water from other areas. Apparently, a terrible mix-up bet -ween the water pipe and sewerage line through some leakage has been responsible for this pollution of WASA water. The residents have done their parts by appealing to the supplying agency.

So far their appeals have fallen on deaf ears and the people there continue to find themselves on the receiving end. It is a serious complaint the residents there have lodged and the response should have been equally prompt from the concerned authority. An agency known for digging roads endlessly and leaving them open for eternity cannot put forward any lame excuse that further digging would have caused inconvenience to the road users there. It is the WASA’s engineering fault that is likely to be responsible for the sewer getting into the water pipes. Even if it was an accident, the WASA is to be held burnable for an offence for which it can be taken to the court. By ignoring th^ appeals the agency has only doubly committed the offence.

The problem lies in the approach to the public issues. Almost all the utility services pose to be condescendingly offering their services to the public. Unless they acknowledge that they are doing no favour to the people by way of their services and it is a people's right to get their services for which they pay. things will never really improve. Irregularities and even serious corrupt practices are sometimes reported in newspapers, showing how those let down the agencies concerned and cost the nation.

As for the contamination of the WASA water, it is undeniable that sometimes accidents can also be responsible for the underground fouling. We also understand that the pressure on the WASA is heavy. But this does not make a case for it to be unresponsive to genuine grievances of its customers. As precious a commodity as water calls for maximum discreet use of it. By allowing the water to get contaminated the WASA is also forcing the residents to waste it. The Hazaribagh locality might not be the only area to get the raw deal from the agency. Many other areas are also getting water contaminated to some degrees. In all such cases people Eave to be satisfied in the first place that the supply is adequate. Then they can try to apply their own mechanism to purify their drinking water. Getting enough water is considered a luck here. Of course, there is a serious maldistribution of water in the city. That problem should also be addressed.