The Hindu 18.03.2010
Water Board proposes tariff for sewerage
J.S. Ifthekhar
| So far there is no policy to collect sewerage cess alone |
Under HMWSSB Act, one has to pay for sewerage even if one doesn't have a water connection
The board is likely to implement the new tariff from next month
Hyderabad: Hyderabadis watch out. Even if you do not have a water connection, you have to still pay for the sewerage. The Water Board has decided to go after such persons who are using its sewerage network and yet not paying a pie.
Task
The Board has set itself a daunting task of checking how many households in the twin cities have water tap connections. It has planned to take the help of property tax data of GHMC to zero in on the households. In fact the exercise is intended to find out how many households do not have water connections. According to rough estimates there are 12 lakh houses in the core city while the number of water connections is just 7.25 lakh.
Under the HMWSSB Act one has to pay for the sewerage let out into the Board's network even if one doesn't have a water connection. “This will not yield much revenue but we want to get into the net everyone using our sewerage system”, said K. Ashok Reddy, Executive Director, HMWSSB.
Verification
The Board will carry out a detailed physical verification using the GHMC property tax data. If somebody is not having a connection the Board wants to know whether its network has not reached him or one is simply not interested in taking a connection or a connection exists but it is not shown in the Board's data base. If none of these things are there it will be construed that the household has an illegal connection or using some other source to meet the water needs.
There are some 5,000 odd premises, mostly function halls and hotels, which are not depended on the Board's water. They are meeting their needs through private water tankers and bore wells. Whatever, they have to still pay for using the sewerage network, it is said.
So far the Board doesn't have a policy to collect sewerage cess alone. Its present minimum tariff of Rs.126.50 for 15 kl water includes Rs.90 towards water charges, Rs. 31.50 towards sewerage cess and service charge of Rs. 5. Now the Board propose to come up with a tariff for sewerage alone. “It will be proportional and not much”, Mr. Ashok Reddy said.
The Board hopes to complete the exercise fast and implement the new sewerage tariff from next month.
