The Pioneer 31.08.2010
Water tariff hike unnecessaryGeetika Thakur | Chandigarh
With local communities protesting against the hike in water tariff since many days, even the local residents are calling it an unnecessary step and said that they are not even getting water at fixed time.
Numerous city residents said that UT Administration is increasing water tariffs as a tool to escape from their own mistakes of letting plenty of water being wasted each day, due to leakage and water theft.
PGIMER auditor in fee section Kulwinder Kaur said: “All this has happened due to the non-seriousness of Municipal Corporation Chandigarh (MCC). They failed to collect the water dues from people across the city and landed up losing huge amount.”
She further added that now to cover up the faults, MCC is hiking the water tariff and harassing the common man to an unjustified limit.
Another resident Kamlesh Puri said: “Along with uncollected dues amounting crores of rupees, MCC even failed to stop the leakage of water in the city. Anyone can easily witness plenty of water getting wasted each day due to leakage but nothing concrete has been done till now to stop that.”
“The water tariff was already an issue of concern in the city but this hike will surely make it hard for everyone to breathe. With high costs of almost everything in the market, now the water will also join other expensive commodities,” alleged resident Tanya.
Furious upon the water theft across the city and the negligent behaviour of MCC towards the same, city-based teacher Deepti said, “The administration has made it an instrument to recover the huge arrears of water bills which has been lost due to their negligence in stopping the water theft. There are numerous industries and places where water is getting stolen and no step has been taken yet.”
“The result of irresponsible work of the civic body has landed up in penalising a common man, who is already under the burden of hike in numerous other commodities. Instead of hiking water tariffs, the civic body firstly must ensure no leakage and water theft and do not burden a common man unnecessarily,” added she.
The citizens shared that instead of hiking tariff, recovery of bills must be done in a time-bound manner. This will not only result in recovery of all the dues and help corporation to arrest the water thieves but will also relive denizens from unnecessary burden of paying extra rupees.
