The Water Board has decided to fix meters for all free supply customers like public stand posts (PSPs) and charities. The 5000-odd PSPs and places of worships in the twin cities and surrounding municipalities will have water meters installed by November end.
The idea is to quantify the water being supplied freely to various institutions. For installing the meters, the Board has sanctioned a budget of Rs.1 lakh to each of the 16 divisions. At present 330 mgd of water is being supplied to the city but the Board is able to account for only 180 mgd. There is no trace of where the remaining 150 mgd is going.
Government has taken a serious view of this glaring lapse. Principal Secretary, Municipal Administration, T.S. Appa Rao, has asked the Water Board to bill for the entire 330 mgd by gradually increasing the billed quantity. As such, each general manager has been set with a target to raise the billing by 10 to 30 per cent every month.
The Board has managed to increase the billed quantity from 143 mgd in September to 167 mgd in October covering 7,13,367 consumer account numbers (CANs). The total number of CANs is 7.42 lakh.
According to a rough estimate, the PSPs consume about 4 mgd while paid and free tankers account for 5 mgd. Besides, a good amount of water goes to waste by way of line leakages and illegal connections. There are also a large number of water connections without any meter.
All this are proposed to be metered in the coming days. “We now want to bring this unaccounted water into the system. What we are drawing from the source will be accounted,” said K. Ashok Reddy, executive director, HMWSSB.
Increase in revenue
The efforts made during the last few months have yielded results. The revenue demand has gone up from Rs. 36 crore in September to Rs. 39 crore in October. The Board plans to further increase its revenue by removing the subsidy given to commercial establishments in water tariff.
Now, both domestic and commercial connections are charged Rs.6 per kilo litre up to 15 kl while for the Board it cost Rs.23 per kl. In other metros, commercial establishments do not enjoy any subsidy, it is said.
