Coimbatore: While the city corporation has been justifying the privatization of the 24/7 drinking water supply project, claiming lack of skilled manpower to carry out the work, employees of the Tamil Nadu water and drainage (TWAD) board say they are capable of executing the work.The TWAD Board Workers Association, affiliated to CITU, on Saturday passed a resolution at its annual meeting stating that the board has skilled manpower capable of executing the project in a much better way than the private company. “It was the TWAD workers, who created the existing infrastructure of drinking water system in Coimbatore decades ago and the system has been functioning properly till date,” said R Saravanan, district secretary of the association. While water connection from Pillur reservoir was established in 1995, the connection from Siruvani reservoir was established in the 60s.Explaining that only local engineers and workers have knowledge about the distribution system, water availability and requirement, Saravanan said that TWAD has implemented over 523 water projects across the state and all the projects were executed successfully.General secretary of the Central Organization of TWAD Board Employees M Balakumaran questioned the need to handover the project to the private company when the TWAD board is considered one of the best in the water distribution field. “If the corporation really thinks that we are unskilled, then why did they want 50 TWAD employees to be deployed in the 247 water supply project to assist the private company?” he said.The city corporation had signed a contract with French firm Suez Projects Private Limited for a period of 26 yearsone year study period, four years of implementation period and 21 years of maintenance periodto provide water to 60 wards at a cost of Rs 2,961crore. The company has started replacing pipelines at RS Puram.

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