Kolkata: As several parts of the country continue to face an acute water crisis, a bunch of young ‘water crusaders’ in Kolkata has taken matters into their own hands and launched a drive to fix faulty roadside taps.
Their efforts are preventing wastage of nearly 30 per cent of water in the city -- enough to fulfill the requirement of a port city like Cape Town in South Africa.
It all started when Vijay Agarwal, on his way to drop his child to a South Kolkata school one day, noticed a few running taps. He raised the concern with his friend Ajay Mittal and together they decided to save the precious natural resource by repairing faulty and open taps.
They formed a group called Active Citizens Together for Sustainability (ACTS) and so far they have repaired nearly 350 faulty taps and open taps across the city and its suburbs, including places like Chetla, Behala, Kasba, North Kolkata, Bhawanipur, Hazra, Peara Bagan, Mominpur and Ekbalpur.
In a span of just three-and-half-months, the group has managed to save gallons of water in the city. There work was appreciated by Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Mayor Firhad Hakim and he assured all kind of support to them for this outstanding job.
“As per the Asian Development Bank (ADB) report, more than 30 percent of water supplied by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation last year was wasted due to leaky/faulty/open taps. This is quite concerning and therefore we gave decided to take the lead. Our research shows that 30 per cent of water is enough to fulfill the requirement of Cape Town in South Africa,” said Ajay Mittal, one of the founding members of ACTS.
“We roped in some active citizens and plumbers and repaired more than 350 such taps in the city and its adjoining areas. People are appreciating our work and we are making them aware about the importance of water. We requested them not to waste water. Ours is a small contribution to the society but with a huge impact. I would like to request more people to come forward to save water,” he said, adding that they are calling this mission ‘Fix it for Life’.
The group is now planning to organise seminars and workshop for apartments/house owners on repairing of faulty taps in their houses.
The group is also requesting people to install devices at their rooftop tanks to stop the flow of water once the tank is full. “Apart from working on water conservation, we are also working on a anti-plastic mission,” Mittal said.
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