Aurangabad: The cantonment board area is seeing a spike in the number of cases of gastroenteritis again, once again bring the issue of drinking water under sharp focus . In November last year, there were more than 5,000 cases of gastroenteritis in the area.Assistant medical officer at the Cantonment General Hospital, Vinod Dhamande, told TOI on Tuesday that about 30 cases of gastroenteritis were reported daily in the past four days.The board CEO, however, said patients are arriving from outside the cantonment.Last year, a large number of people taken ill was found to be because of the supply of contaminated water to the civilian areas. Teams of experts had suggested a slew of measures to prevent such morbidity.Among the measures suggested were: Changing 100-metre pipeline from Karnapura chowk to board office, repairing leakages in the internal pipeline, regular cleaning of sump-house and testing of water samples on a daily basis.The work of laying the 100-metre overhead pipeline was supposed to be completed by December 4. It is nowhere near complete yet. Engineer Nilesh Tanpure of the Water Works Department said cleaning of the sump house was last done eight-and-a-half months ago.The board is too short-staffed to do the job itself, and outsources it. The call for the contract has received a bidder at the seventh attempt, he said, but approval is pending. “Once the contract is awarded, cleaning will be done,” he said.Activist Mayank Pande said the board seems to have not learnt any lessons from last year’s incident. “Residents regularly complain of turbid and impure drinking water supplied by the board. The sump-house is supposed to be cleaned once in six months.”

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