Water supply restored to Mumbai

Millions of people have spent a day without water in the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) because of repairs to the existing pipelines.

Engineers say they have now completed repairs and are restarting supplies to the city's 18 million people.

Authorities gave notice of their decision and asked people to stock up on water ahead of the shutdown.

Water pipelines in most Indian cities are old and rusty. Leakages leading to contamination of supplies are common.

Bombay municipal commissioner Johny Joseph told the BBC news website the city needed 3,900m litres of water every day against the present supply of 3,200m.

"We showered and washed our clothes the night before"
Chisy Das, Mumbai resident

"To augment this shortage and increase water supply, we need to connect new pipelines to the existing system and carry out repairs in existing reservoirs," he said.

Mr Joseph said this work needed to be carried out in a "waterless atmosphere" and therefore authorities had to shut off water supply for 24 hours.

Long queues

The water supply is expected to be fully restored by Thursday morning.

After the warning, people stood in long lines on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning to collect water from public taps and water tankers.

They stored water in buckets, vessels and even plastic pouches.

A resident of western suburb Bandra, Chaitali Patel, washed her dishes the night before and stored water in buckets and cooking vessels to see her through the hours of drought.

"I did not leave anything for my maid to do because there would be no running water by the time she came in the morning," she said.

"I even washed my hair last evening because I knew I would barely have enough water to take a quick shower in the morning."

Media professional Chisy Das said she moved to Mumbai seven years ago and this was the first time she had experienced such a water shortage here.

"I filled my utensils and buckets because we don't have big containers to store water like we do in other towns where water shortage is a normal occurrence," she said.

"We all showered and washed our clothes the night before. Today, the entire family is eating all three meals out to avoid having dirty dishes in the sink."

Water tankers were much in demand to help deal with water shortage.

Some charged double of what they would normally charge for supplying water to various houses and residential colonies.

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Municipal Corporation of Mumbai
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