The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) has decided to extend One Time Settlement (OTS) benefit scheme by waiving the entire interest amount to both government and private defaulters coming forward to clear their long pending arrears.

The private defaulters with long pending dues will be given full interest waiver for clearing all the arrears before January 31  while for the government departments that clear all the dues, water board will give full interest waiver till March 31.

Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who is also the chairman of the HMWS&SB has approved the proposal a few days ago.

HMWS&SB officials told Express that the overall dues from private consumers as well as from the government departments is about Rs 878.99 crore. Of these, principal amount is about Rs 583.80 crore while the interest is about Rs 295.19 crore.

Presently the arrears of consumers excluding government departments is about Rs 688.36 crore of which nearly Rs 241.86 crore is interest component.

The total defaulters are around 2.5 lakh of the total 7.80 lakh domestic consumers having 15 mm dia size connections (Rs 194.79 crore). About 27,500 are non- domestic consumers (commercial consumers) with 20 mm dia and above size, their due amount is to the tune Rs 47.07 crore.

Whereas about 899 government and panchayat raj department consumers dues are to the tune of Rs 190.63 crore of which alone Rs 53.33 crore is interest. The water board would give Rs 20,000 interest waiver for consumers who clear the entire amount at one go, the officials added.

The general managers of all 16 divisions spread over the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) area would be given authorisation to settle the cases under one time settlement scheme apart from head office located at Khairatabad to enable the consumers to avail the benefits.