Shillong: A feeder pipeline for the Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme Phase III burst Friday morning. The failure happened during a Public Health Engineering Department pressure test. It turned the Golf Links-Lumshyiap road into a flooded channel. Water surged onto the busy street, caving in a section of the road.
Taxis and cars forced their way through the deluge. The pressure test aimed to push water to a storage tank at Belafonte, Lumshyiap, serving Pynthorumkhrah and Golf Links. Sources blame the accident on faulty connection points. They suspect weak joints caused by shoddy pipe-laying work. One source noted that officials "released water at full force" before the failure occurred.
This incident brings scrutiny to a project plagued by years of delays and rising costs. The scheme started in 2008 when former President Pratibha Patil laid the foundation stone at Mawphlang. The initial budget hit 193 crore rupees. The state government later added 65 crore rupees to finish the job. Critics now question if the department completed any quality checks on the joints before turning on the pressure.
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