The Deccan Chronicle 02.09.2010
Water Board plan washed outHyderabad, Sept. 1: The voluntary disclosure scheme by the Water Board to regularise illegal water connections seems to have been a wasted effort and the Board is now planning disconnection drives to tackle the illegal water connection problem.
Less than 700 applications have been submitted seeking regularisation despite a preliminary survey putting the number of illegal connections at over 50,000 in the city with a majority of them being in surrounding municipalities. Enquiries revealed that the Water Board does not have proper data on the number of, let alone illegal connections.
With the scheme scheduled to end on September 14, the Water Board has constituted special “disconnection gangs.” The Water Board managing director, Mr M. Jagadeeshwar, said these teams would be instructed to be “merciless” in their drive to weed out and disconnect illegal water connections from September 15.
Meanwhile, the citizens from surrounding municipalities have accused the Water Board of “launching a blind chase to raise revenues.” A large number of consumers said their water connections were legitimate and records of the same were available with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
Enquiries revealed that the Water Board does not have accurate data on the number of connections in surrounding municipalities as these were earlier under the control of GHMC. The GHMC handed over about one lakh connections in surrounding municipalities to the Water Board in May 2009. The GHMC could not provide data on all the consumers. As a result, several legitimate consumers were listed under the “illegal connections” category in the Water Board’s survey.
