The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) has, through a drive undertaken on Saturday, identified 136 domestic water supply connections in its Banjara Hills section, that can be upgraded and taxed as commercial connections.
These amount to 32 per cent of the total 519 connections in Banjara Hills, a statement from the Board said.
Matching database
The one-day drive was taken up subsequent to the ‘Citizen 360 Analysis’ conducted by Telangana State Technological Services Department (TSTS) with an aim to match the HMWSSB’s database with that of other departments including GHMC, TSSPDCL, and Commercial Taxes. It was identified that the connections categorised as commercial under other databases were being shown as domestic in HMWSSB’s. The TSTS department has identified that the data pertaining to 41,857 domestic connections in various divisions has mismatches, and needs to be verified on the field before conversion to commercial connections.
In the Operation & Maintenance Divison VI, of which Banjara Hills is part, the department has identified 4,230 properties matching the criterion, and Banjara Hills was taken up first for field verification. Senior officials have been deputed to carry out the process.
The data obtained on field verification will be scrutinised at head office and accordingly, the connections will be converted to commercial category, the statement said.
After conversion to commercial category, Director (Operations) is designated as the appellate authority and consumer can approach him in case of complaints.
The HMWSSB has a total of 9.08 lakh connections, of which only 30,589 are shown as non-domestic/commercial connections. In view of the size of the city, the assumption is that the number of commercial connections should have been more.
