Mangaluru City Corporation not prescribing standards for fixing water meters resulting in fault in meters and abnormal reading thus putting consumers in trouble came to the fore at the Water Adalat conducted by Mayor Bhaskar K. here on Monday.
A majority of the complaints addressed in the adalat pertained to abnormal meter reading. It is said to be due to poor quality of meters fixed by consumers.
According to some water supply engineers, river water supplied during rainy season in the city will not be regularly clear like in summer.
At times, there would be some amount of mud in it. Whenever such water is supplied, poor quality water meters got stuck or meter reading jumped showing abnormal reading. Meter reading jumped even if some amount of air passed through the pipeline.
Now, water consumers in the city can purchase and fix water meters of any quality and make. The corporation has not fixed any standards for meters.
On the other hand, the corporation has not empanelled any manufactures from whom consumers can purchase quality meters. Such meters came with guarantee from manufacturers. Some city corporations in the State have adopted such a system.
The Mayor and Deputy Mayor Mohammed Kunjathbail told reporters that the corporation has plans to replace all water meters of consumers both under Jalasiri, the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded water supply infrastructure upgradation scheme in the city and the Smart City mission.
In this case, the operation and maintenance for eight years will have to be done by the contractor who has developed the water supply infrastructure.
But the proposal is still under discussion and nothing has been finalised.
The Mayor said that of the 54 complainants, only 24 turned up for the adalat.
In addition, about 70 complaints are pending to be addressed.
They would be resolved by calling another adalat after a few days.
K.S. Linge Gowda, Executive Engineer (water supply), said that there were 144 cases of defaulters owing more than ₹ 1 lakh water bill to the civic body. The recovery process is on.
