A leakage in the water supply pipeline of Maithon Water Supply project at Barwa East area on October 24 has affected more than five lakh residents.

Repair work had started on Tuesday morning and completed by Wednesday morning but minor leakages disrupted the supply of water again.

Chintu Vishwakarma, a resident of Matkuria locality of Dhanbad said, “The water supply disruption has badly affected our puja celebration which has already started on dull note this year due to wide range of restrictions imposed on lighting, decoration, pandal and idol height etc.”

“While everybody in other parts of district like Jharia, Sindri and Katras were getting ready for puja by performing their homely chores early in morning we had to wander from morning to late afternoon during Ashtami, Navmi and Dashmi (October 24-26) arranging water through nearby hand pumps and wells,” said Vishwakarma.

Around 20 million gallons of water is supplied every day from Maithon lake to different parts of Dhanbad after water treatment is carried out in Bhelatand treatment plant of Drinking Water Sanitation department.

Rishu Pandey, a resident of Bank More area said, “I live in a rented room here at Bank More along with another trainee, a resident of Chandrapura in Dhanbad and since the over head tank of land lord had been exhausted on October 25 morning itself we had no other option than to purchase packaged water and also fetch water from a well situated around one kilometre away from our house.”

Rahul Priyadarshi, sub divisional officer of the drinking water and sanitation department, claimed that the second leakage has been repaired on Wednesday but water supply is not likely to be restored before Thursday evening.

“We have completed the repair work of the water supply pipeline and water supply is expected to restored by tomorrow morning,” said Manish Kumar, executive engineer of Drinking Water and Sanitation Department.