The Times of India 22.01.2014
Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation's hi-tech water metering system earns kudos
VISAKHAPATNAM: The Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation's (GVMC) efforts to tackle revenue losses arising out of water supply to bulk consumers, most of whom are giant industrial units and public sector units like Visakha refinery of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam Port Trust, with the installation of wireless digital water metering system seems to have come in for praise from the Union ministry of urban development (MoUD).
MoUD has not only evinced interest in replicating GVMC's wireless digital metering system in other cities but has also decided to give Vizag's civic body the National Urban Water Award 2011-12 in the financial reform category, GVMC commissioner MV Satyanarayana said.
As per Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission ( JNNURM) guidelines, GVMC decided to adopt the system to usher in accountability in water supply and check revenue losses arising out of water leakages as well as fraudulent practices in metering, supply and revenue collection.
GVMC invited Expression of Interest (EoI) for installation of digital water meters in January 2010. VFC, which was among the two parties that applied for the project, was selected by way of an open tender and awarded the work on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. VLC imported the digital meters, each of which costs Rs 3.5 lakh, from German player Siemens and started installing the water meters in June 2010 and completed installations by December 2010.
After conducting awareness camps among its 77 bulk users, GVMC officially started implementing the digital water metering system from March, 2011. Prior to this, GVMC used to depend on mechanized water meters to measure the quantum of water supplied to industries and charge them for water usage.
"The earlier mechanized meters with obstruct technology were installed by consumers themselves. Due to their (meters) defective working, a lot of water used to be wasted and was unaccounted for, affecting water supply to the general public. Despite several reminders by GVMC, the industrial consumers did not change the meters," said the GVMC chief.
I Ramesh Raju, managing partner, Vin Flow Controls (VFC), which designed the wireless water metering system and will be taking care of its maintenance till March 2016, said GVMC is the first urban civic body in the country to adopt the fully automated water supply metering system.
"After installation of the digital water meters at a cost of Rs 3.5 crore, GVMC is now able to garner Rs 7.5 crore per month by supplying approximately 15 million gallons per day (MGD) to 77 bulk consumers as against only around Rs 5 crore from the same connections prior to March 2011. This is a nearly 40-50% increase in revenue collection and has resulted in increased accountability in supply of water at both ends," Ramesh Raju said.
