2/3 of Mumbaikars have to walk kilometers for water

Mumbai, the financial capital of India which generates 5% of country’s GDP is proud of its status as the country’s richest city, but shamefully, two-thirds of its residents have to drudge away for hours a day to obtain as basic a necessity as water even a bucket of water.

According to a study done by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), a majority of the city’s population, which lives in slums, are forced to waste their workday or school time to collect the basic commodity of portable water, for their survival.

The study was a part of initiative taken by TISS, to understand the impact of irregular water supply on the people of those slums , which are established after 1995 and do not receive any sort of water supply from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The study which had been carried out on 21 slums communities of the city covering more than 2 lakh people has thrown some alarming statistics.

Since the water supply comes between 8 am to 2 pm, 35% of adult are forced to skip their work where as 69% of children has to skip school in order to collect water. More than 81% of people have to wait in the queue for more than 3 hours before bringing water to their home, carrying the buckets on the head.

Women are left out to be most suffered one from this problem as 87.5% of women population has to engage in a precarious task of traveling on an average of 1.5 km to bring the water buckets of weight 40kg on their head.

Around 81% people has to purchase water to carry out their daily necessity for which a family has to shell out Rs 600 monthly for a daily consumption of 150 litres of water.Only 19% of the residing population has the access to tap water at their homes.

According to Simpreet Singh of the National Alliance of People’s Movement, “People have to buy water from middlemen, who procure it illegally,’’ said Simpreet Singh of. The slum dwellers pay 30 times more than the prescribed rate for water.”

Daily in Mumbai, around 3500 million litres of water is being supplied from various resources. Out of this daily supply, around 700 million litres of water is lost by way of water thefts, illegal connections and leakages, per day in Mumbai.