TimesView Piling garbage, overflowing drains, leakages at homes and erratic water supply. The quarters at the police lines have remained neglected for long. There is a need to minimise the delay in repairing and laying new water and sewage pipelines. Inadequate police housing has been a problem for years.The authorities concerned can at least make some effort to improve the existing housing to improve the living conditions of policemen and their families. PUNE: Water-starved for two days, police constables and their wives living at the Shivajinagar Police Lines on Friday staged a demonstration and had to be persuaded against blocking the Modern College Road.The residents — about 500 of them — complained that water shortage was a perennial problem at the quarters, spreading across both ends of the Modern College Road. “With this kind of water supply and the struggle to source water every morning, what are we supposed to do? We may have to choose between taking care of the house and going to our duty. The water pressure is so poor that I wake up early every morning, go downstairs and fetch buckets of water. Is this how we are supposed to live while serving the police?” wondered a woman constable, who joined the demonstration.Many had harrowing tales to share about what the poor water supply had done to their families.“We live on the third floor and the water pressure is not enough to reach our house. So, everyone in our family goes at least to the first floor to fetch water, which comes only once or twice a day. On one of these occasions, my mother-in-law slipped and broke her leg. We had to spend about Rs 2 lakh to treat her. Who is responsible for the mess?” asked Kavita Borse, living at the police quarters for about two years.NGOs working for the welfare of the police families claimed that the authorities were hardly bothered about their plight.“All the nearby facilities, even slums, have round the clock water supply. But the police personnel here don’t even get a few hours of supply after 15-16 hours of duty. If this continues, the families will surely stage a bigger demonstration and block roads to press for their demands,” said Rajendra Kapote, the head of the Police Mitra Sangathna, which helped organise the demonstration while remonstrating with the local water department engineer.The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) said the immediate reason for the water shortage at the Police Lines was a planned closure to facilitate laying a pipeline towards the Cantonment Water Works, but it did not know of long-term issues.“We have to check if there are other problems in the Police Lines regarding the water supply. There are fluctuations all the time in water supply, especially during the drier and hotter months, which just passed by,” said a senior engineer of the PMC’s water department.

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