Staff urge HMWS&SB MD to turn off 20KL free water
Hyderabad: General Managers (GMs) of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) have written to their managing director C. Sudharsan Reddy to scrap 20KL free water scheme.
The scheme introduced by the BRS government allowed households with water meters to receive free 20,000 litres per month in addition to the ones living in slums.
“The decision on whether to retain the scheme or scrap it will be taken by the state government,” said an HMWS&SB official. The scheme was proposed by
some officials after their salaries were delayed.
At present, the HMWS&SB has 13.6 lakh connections and over 6 lakh people have not enrolled for this free scheme.
Verification with people who have not enrolled with the scheme revealed that, property owners did not want to share their information with the HMWS&SB to save water bill less than Rs 600 per month.
“I have recently purchased another house on loan, and both property tax identification numbers (PTIN) are in my name. I don’t want to share my data and link Aadhaar against my customer account number (CAN) with the
water board to avoid monthly water bill charges,” said a resident of Himayath Nagar.
The HMW&SB also held a meeting on Wednesday pertaining to revenue generation. The MD of the board has set targets and instructed officials to reach the targets within 10 days and focus on bad debts and
water bill dues of commercial consumers.
“Text messages will be sent to those who do not pay the bills and water connection will be disconnected of those who do not pay bills,” said HMWS&SB in a release on Wednesday.