In order to tackle and regularise illegal water connections in city, Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) has constituted four Vigilance Task Force (VTF) teams for regular inspections of households in the four circles.
The move to appoint four task force teams comes after Water Board achieved success from its first task force team set up in August to check illegal water connections in just one circle in Hyderabad.
“It paid off, and we managed to collect Rs. 20 lakh towards penalties from customers. The task force team members will regularly conduct inspections and on finding illegal connections, they will take action,” says a revenue official of HMWSSB, declining to be identified.
Water Board officials explained that apart from taking action against illegal connections and collection of dues and penalties, the VTF teams would also spread awareness among consumers about regularising illegal connections in order to avoid penalties.
In the first week of September, a VTF team detected 28 illegal connections in the Alwal division, and disconnected 14 of them. Later, it also collected fine amounting to over Rs. 5 lakh. “The customers are both, domestic and commercial in nature,” said the official.
Earlier this year, the HMWSSB asked those who have illegal water connections in their homes to regularise the same under the Voluntary Disclosure Scheme (VDS). “Though that programme ended, we are still getting requests from people to regularise their connections. Hence we are still accepting applications,” revenue officials said.
As of now, there are 8,27,907 water connections in the city under the HMWSSB.
