CITY’S PIPELINES TO BE REVAMPED

Large tracts of road to be dug up

Close to 600km of carpeted roads are to be dug up by the National Water Board in a bid to revamp the city’s pipelines that are over 100 years old.

The USD 240 million project will see large tracts of road in Colombo and its suburbs dug up between 9 p.m and 5 a.m each night.

“The police have only allocated between 8a.m. and 5p.m. for us to work and this is unfortunate as this slows down the progress of the project and we have to incur an additional cost to complete it. This also ensures that we can only cover a small area everyday,” K. Ansar Chairman of the Water Board told Daily Mirror.

Ansar explained that it was high time the pipes were replaced, as much of the lines were repaired above and beyond their time of use. “The old system needs to be replaced, we have repaired it as much as we can, but the biggest issue is the huge amount of water we waste because of these old pipes. We are hoping to cut down wastage by at least 50 percent when the new pipes are in place,” he said.

When questions were posed regarding newly carpeted roads that would be dug up for the project, Ansar stated that there was no way around the issue and that it needed to be done. “We have no choice but to break these roads and lay the new pipes.”

The USD 240 million project will see large tracts of road in Colombo and its suburbs dug up between 9 p.m and 5 a.m each night

It was high time the pipes were replaced, as much of the lines were repaired above and beyond their time of use

The police have only allocated between 8a.m. and 5p.m. for us to work and this is unfortunate as this slows down the progress of the project and we have to incur an additional cost to complete it. This also ensures that we can only cover a small area everyday