The Bhopal Municipal Corporation has spent crores of rupees in vain by installing water meters in 60,000 households without any planning.
The water meters have been installed without evolving any system as how these meters would work and how they would help in charging water cess from the consumers.
Around 1.75 lakh water meters would be installed in the city with the newly laid Narmada water supply line and around 60,000 water meters have been installed but the reading work has not been started resulting into revenue loss to the Bhopal Municipal Corporation.
Work of laying of Narmada pipeline in the city has been completed and several areas have started receiving more than adequate water supply for the past few weeks. With the new pipeline water meters have also been attached for measuring the daily water supplied to the residents and as the reading work has not been started and paying according to the rates of the water bill set earlier.
The rate which was decided earlier was Rs14 per thousand litres of water. If the same rates would be applicable it would definitely increase the revenue of BMC for the water meters which have been installed. However, the rates could not be applicable till date.
BMC City Engineer (Water works) AR Pawar said that the a single water meter unit costs around Rs800 to Rs900 and more than 60,000 water meters have been installed. The total number of water meters would be around 1.75 lakh units which would be installed till the completion of the work.
Defending the revenue loss Pawar told that the contractor assigned with the work purchases water meters, installs and later after testing is conducted the payments are made.
This justification by the BMC engineer could not be accepted as around 60,000 water meters have been installed on which around Rs5 crore has been paid and apart from this huge sum the other loss is in the form of water bill payments which has further increased the loss to the BMC.
The water supply from the earlier water supply pipeline has been discontinued and at several places the water supply has been started through the newly laid water supply pipeline but still there are several areas where the Narmada water supply pipeline has to be installed and would take for the whole process but those areas where the work has been completed and water meters have been installed should be made to pay according to the water meters.
Providing the possible solution which would be implemented in the next few days Pawar told that the work of water meter reading would be assigned to agencies within a month after which the meter reading work would be started and those found with tampered water meters would be penalized. The tender process would be started with a week and till the end of the October month the process would be started.
Assistant Engineer (Water work) Zone 8 AK Raghuvanshi accepted that the work of water meter installation is nearing closure in the zone but starting reading work would require some more time.