Water Board Unleashes Whip On Bill Defaulters

Hyderabad: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Water Board officials are taking stringent actions against defaulting consumers to make them pay the dues lakhs especially of commercial and business establishments in the city. In this regard, Minister for Municipal Department KT Rama Rao issued orders to the officials of the Water Board.

In the first step, the officials are concentrating to take the actions on commercial and business consumers to get them pay up the bills accumulated in lakhs for long time. As a part of this, Water Board officials started a special drive on Monday and disconnected 100 commercial water connections and 125 connections on the subsequent day.

Board Managing Director Dana Kishore said they are sticking red notices to the houses of the defaulters with the details of the dues. There would be stringent actions against them who fail to pay the dues, they said, adding, the special drive to recover the huge over dues from the consumers would continue.

Rs.16.25 crore additional burden every month:

According to the official records, the Water Board has been getting monthly collections of Rs.106.25 crore from which Rs.122.50 crore is expended for the management expenditure of the Board. By this, the board is overburdened with Rs.16.25 crore every month which is forcing the Board to depend on the state government to get the funds to take up any new projects or developmental works.

The officials say, to reduce this burden, the Board is initially concentrating on the tap connections of commercial and business consumers instead of residential connections. They said, the Board is moving forward with the government orders to get the defaults of Rs.122.33 crore from 40,013 commercial connections and Rs.164.74 crore from 2,049 industrial connections in the limits of GHMC.

The officials are sticking the notices to the houses of default consumers mentioning the overdue amount with CAN number adding the toll free number 155313 for the due details in different colors.

Regularisation of illegal connections for Re.1:

Meanwhile, the Water Board has issued a dead line for the regularisation of the illegal drinking water connections in the city as August 31 by charging a nominal fee of Re.1. In the case of any failure to regularise the illegal connections, the penalty will strictly be imposed from September 1 and the doubled water bill will be charged for the recognised illegal connections after the deadline, they said.

Water Board AGM of Redhills division Sadanand said there were nearly 500 illegal tap connections in the area out of total 4,700 connections. Banjara Hills Water Works Manager Saritha said there were nearly 200 illegal water connections in the area. The nominal fee of Re.1 is for low income families who have to submit their Aadhaar Number, White Ration Card, Electricity bill and a xerox copy of Patta of the residence. For those, who have more than 100 yards of residence area, will have to pay nearly Rs.7000 without any late fee.

The installation of metres for the connections from the Water Board is mandatory from September 1 and incentive of Rs.200 for each illegal connection in the city will be given for Water Board workers who identify the illegal connections, they added.