Hyderabad: Out of the 8.7 lakh water connections in the city, only 1.6 lakh are metered. While Water Board’s software shows that the meters for the rest are either under repair or locked, authorities say that most connections in the GHMC non-core area don’t have meters. With no meters, the water board is naturally struggling to quantify the water used by consumers.
The department says that it has been serving notices for non-metered connections for the past one month, warning consumers that if they don’t get meters installed, a penalty of double the charges would be imposed from the next billing cycle. Out of the 8.7 lakh water connections in the city, over 30,000 are commercial. Of the remaining 8.4 lakh, 1.4 are slum connections for which the board does not insist on meters. For the remaining 7 lakh connections, only 1.6 lakh are metered. A recent survey done by the board identified lakhs of meters that showed “under repair” or “locked”.
P. S. Suryanarayana, director of revenue, Water Board said, “Most households in the erstwhile MCH have meters. The non-core area, especially the merged municipalities, don’t have meters. These households, until recently, had never been inspected. As per Section 36 of the Water Board Act, 1989, every owner or occupier having a water connection from the Water Board shall provide at his own cost a water meter and attach the same to the service pipe. As required under Rule 27 of the Water Supply Rules, the consumer is required to get the meter fixed. If the meter installed is found to be defunct or defective the owner should get it repaired and re-installed by the competent authority (Water Board). Failure to fix the defective meter within the prescribed time will attract double the normal rates as per Rule 28 of the Act.”
Water bills to be hiked
With Transco increasing the electricity rates, water bills too are likely to be hiked. Currently the Water Board is paying Rs 65 crore towards electricity per month.
Water Board has a deficient budget of Rs 14 crore per year as it spends around Rs 114 crore while its revenue is Rs 100 crore. The recent Rs 450 crore waiver by the state government to defaulters will burden the Water Board as the state will not be compensating the Board. Meanwhile, the yearly budget allocations by the state either goes towards new network laying or for repaying Hudco, the World Bank and other loans.
Interestingly, of the amount waived by the state government, Rs 80 crore was from Asmangarh and Rs 10 crore from SR Nagar, the areas of highest usage. Around 38 per cent of the water supplied to the city does not generate any revenue. Non-revenue water supply is especially prevalent in divisions 1 (Charminar), 2 (Asman Garh) and 3 (Mehdipatnam - south of the Musi) where the Water Board loses around Rs 30 crore a month.
A senior official of the Board, “The board suffers three types of losses: Physical loss (leakages, valve repair or pipeline burst); Commercial loss — illegal connections; and non revenue water supply — unbilled, unauthorised connections. A few houses do not pay according to the water consumed. If the usage is of 30 units, they will pay the bill for only 10 units. So far the Water Board has not cracked down on such connections.” Non-revenue water supply in other parts of the city is between 25- 38 per cent. The Water Board collects around Rs 90 crore from bills, but if the non-revenue water supply is checked, this can go up by another Rs 30-35 crore.
