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Water Supply

No takers for spot water billing

Wednesday, 24 November 2010 09:49 administrator
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The New Indian Express  24.11.2010

No takers for spot water billing

The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) plans to outsource spot-billing and collections to private agencies has received lukewarm response.

Just 50 per cent of private agencies have bagged the allotments, forcing the Water Board to issue fresh notifications for allotments to agencies, on a firstcome- first-serve basis.

Out of 192 dockets to be outsourced, some 90 dockets were outsourced, while for remaining dockets, there was no response.

Dockets still to be outsourced are Charminar (7), Misrigunj (16), Mehdipatnam (18), Narayanguda (9), LB Nagar (10), Sainikpuri (11) and Uppal-Kapra (26).

Last month, the Water Board had decided to convert all dockets into spotbilling and collection with hand-held online electronic point of sale (EPOS) machines. Private firms were invited to undertake billing and collection.

HMWS&SB officials told Expresso each docket would have between 1,000 to 1,500 consumer account numbers (CANs). Under the system, a certain number of consumers can be managed by one meter reader to form a ‘docket’ and allotted to the outsourcing agency.

Docket of CANs would be loaded in an EPOS machine and selected firms had to pay a specified amount for each docket in advance. After depositing the money, the machine would be activated for issue of receipts.

The collection mechanism would be automatically locked once total amount collected reached the deposit amount paid by the agency. The lock would be released for subsequent collections only after money was re-deposited, according to officials. Value of transactions up to `500 is `10 per CAN per month, for transactions above `500 and up to `1000, `15 per CAN, for above `1,000, it will be `20 per CAN and anything above `10,000, it will be `25 per CAN. If any bill was found pending after 15th of every month, a penalty would be levied, officials added.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 November 2010 09:51
 

Private hands may shape city's water supply system

Wednesday, 24 November 2010 00:00 administrator
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The Times of India            24.11.2010

Private hands may shape city's water supply system

PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) may look at a build-operate-transfer (BOT) plan to overhaul the city's water supply system.

Private entities with adequate expertise are expected to bid for the plan. The firm will have to set up a supply system that ensures equitable water for all citizens. It will have to address leaks, pilferage and wastage of water.

Municipal commissioner Mahesh Zagade had tabled a proposal before the standing committee submitted by Tata Consultants on how to address and augment the city's water supply needs. The firm sought Rs 37 crore as fees.

The standing committee members opposed the proposal saying that there was no need to pay excessive fees to the firm and sent it back to the civic administration.

"The PMC has already conducted various surveys and appointed consultants for water supply. However, all these reports are gathering dust. The administration with the help of these old reports should ask its officers to make and execute the plan," said standing committee member Ujwal Keskar.

Chairman Arvind Shinde said that the civic administration should look for a BOT model so that the PMC will not have to invest in the project.

"The standing committee has asked the civic administration to tap the possibility of a BOT project plan which is being done. There is an immediate need to overhaul the water supply system considering the last two years' water crises," said municipal commissioner Mahesh Zagade.

"The plan includes leakage detection, repairs and water distribution. Once the BOT plan is ready, we will table it before the elected representatives for approval," said Zagade.

"Private entrepreneurs could be invited to build-operate and transfer the water supply system. We have to work on the model and ensure that the investor gets returns. The main hurdle is that water supply is not a profit-making venture and no private player will be interested in the project unless he is assured of good returns," said Zagade.

Pune gets its drinking water supply from the Khadakwasla reservoir through a closed pipeline. In addition, it lifts water from the Mutha right bank canal which is purified at the Parvati water works which is then supplied to the city.

In November 2009, then state minister for water resources Ajit Pawar had asked the civic body to appoint a professional agency which could suggest measures for augmenting the city's water supply and prevent distribution losses.

The civic body's problem is peculiar. It has no system to measure the quantity of water it receives from the state irrigation department. This means that the city's water supply system is based on approximate calculations with no exact figure of the water supply available. This information tumbled out of the details sought by civic activist Major General ( retd) SCN Jatar who had filed an application under the Right of Information (RTI) Act, 2005 recently.

In its reply to Jatar's query, the PMC has admitted that it has no system to measure the water lifted from the canal at Parvati water works. The civic body said that it will put in place a way to measure the quantum in 3-4 months. However, the ground reality is that nobody in the PMC knows exactly how much water the city receives.

Last Updated on Friday, 26 November 2010 11:15
 

Water board to dig 52 new bore wells

Monday, 22 November 2010 09:50 administrator
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The Times of India            22.11.2010

Water board to dig 52 new bore wells

PANAJI: Central ground water board (CGWB) will dig 52 new bore wells and install digital water level recorders in most of them to gather data for assessment of ground water resources in various parts of Goa. "The new equipment will help record data once every six hours and four times a day," a CGWB source said.

Ground water assessment is expected to receive a big boost as the state water resources department has also undertaken a hydrology project envisaging setting up of 110 ground water monitoring stations, including 65 bore wells and 45 existing open wells by 2012. More than 50% work on the 22.64 crore-project, including a soft loan of 18.71 crore from World Bank, has been completed.

The study by both agencies will provide data on various aspects, including quality of ground water and quantum of rainfall. Explaining the process of gathering data, the CGWB source said that the memory clip inside the recorder will reveal water levels and diurnal changes on a daily basis. The automatically programmed recorders will obviate the need for officials to visit the sites frequently.

"The officials can visit the site after a fortnight, retrieve the chip and feed it into a laptop computer, record the data and put it back in the installation. The location of wells will seek to cover all areas, though not hilly parts, and each well will be in a radius of 18 km.

Recently, the board had announced findings of analysis of ground water assessment from 38 open wells during May 2010 in a bid to trace pollutants, especially heavy metals and organic. Most samples indicated a reading of less than 500 microsiemens per centimeter at 25 degrees Celsius for electrical conductivity (EC), indicating it is free of contamination. For this reason, only a few samples were further tested for all 14 parameters and the readings showed that ground water quality is good for drinking and other purposes, board sources said. However, the samples do not cover all problem areas in Goa, especially industrial estates and springs and some coastal villages which have been contaminated by influx of sewage and other pollutants.

 
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