The Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) has set itself a target of providing water connections to 80% households in the city and supplying 105 litres of water per capita per day by the end of the 2019-20 financial year.
In 2018-19, the civic body achieved a coverage of 72.04 %.
Steep targets
During the current year, GVMC has set for itself service-level benchmarks as per the guidelines of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. The benchmarks cover water supply and management, solid waste management, sewage management and stormwater drains. The benchmarks are steep as compared to present levels in solid waste management.
According to an official release, the other benchmarks related to water supply that are sought to be achieved are: increasing coverage of water meters to 38%; bringing down non-revenue water share to 28%; continuous water supply (one hour); quality of water (100%); complaint redress (96%), cost recovery in water supply services (100%); collection of water charges (100%) and efficiency in collection of water supply related charges (90%).
Segregation issues
GVMC is aiming to improve segregation of solid waste from 70.17% to 85%, and also seeks to improve the extent of scientific disposal of solid waste to 85% from the present 9.84%. The extent of cost recovery in solid waste management services was a mere 2.84%. GVMC now wants to achieve 100% in this field.
Regarding sewage management, the civic body is aiming at increased coverage of toilets to 80%, increasing sewage network service to 40% and collection efficiency of sewage network to 60% and cost of recovery in sewage management to 40%.
In stormwater management, the present coverage is 59.64% and the GVMC plans to increase it to 60%.
