The Hindu                 03.05.2013

Maintenance of water meters to be outsourced

An ‘experienced private agency’ to be given the responsibility.

Residents of the city will soon have their drinking
water consumption metered if the Tiruchirapalli City Corporation manages
to implement an ambitious proposal to fix and operationalise water
meters.

While approving a revision in the water tax,
the Corporation Council at its meeting on Tuesday gave its nod for an
official resolution proposing the hiring of a private agency to supply,
fix, and maintain meters for all drinking water connections in the city.

However,
a similar proposal mooted a few years ago failed to take off and it
remains to be seen whether the civic body will go the distance this
time. Contrary to the claims of the corporation, a majority of the
93,732 domestic water connections in the city do not have functional
meters. Many household connections, especially those given decades ago,
do not have meters at all.

There are about 1,653
connections under the non-domestic/industrial categories which too do
not have proper meter systems. Although the civic body regularly fixes
the water charges based on a metering system, the minimum charges
stipulated on tap basis are usually collected.

In 2004 and prior to that, the corporation proposed privatising the distribution network with a metered system of supply.

The
civic body had then contended that only through privatisation, the
metering system could be implemented effectively as it did not have the
manpower to take the readings of the water meters.

In
a slight modification over this, the latest proposal seeks to hire an
“experienced private agency” to supply, fix, and maintain the water
meters. The agency will take the readings through its own staff and
issue the demand notices to the consumers.

Civic
officials argue that it was time the city had a metering system to
restrict the use of drinking water for other household purposes such as
washing and even watering the gardens.

“In the
absence of any metering system and the liability of having to pay up in
proportion to their consumption levels, many consumers tend to misuse
the drinking water supplied by the civic body. This is truer in places
where consumers get abundant supply everyday even while some parts of
the city get water supply only on alternative days.

For
instance, in many of the old city limits the per capita supply a day is
about 100 litres while in many other places such as the newly added
wards it ranges from 40 to 70 litres,” says a corporation official. The
introduction of a system would put the onus on the consumers and ensure
judicious use of drinking water, he said. It remains to be seen whether
the corporation will be able to give shape to the proposal as ultimately
it would require much political will. Some of the senior and former
Corporation councillors are sceptical about the move and feel that the
corporation just wants to go on record to show funding agencies that
they were working towards metering the water supplied to residents.

If
the proposal goes through, domestic consumers will be charged the
minimum of Rs. 125 for consumption up to 10,000 litres a month. They
would have to shell out Rs. 12.50 for every additional 1,000 litres.

Hike in charges

The
council has approved an increase in the charges for water purchased by
residents or institutions in tankers, both corporation owned or private.

For
water supplied through corporation tankers the charge for a trip up to
five km has been fixed at Rs. 1,000. The charge will be Rs. 1,500 for
trips beyond five km and Rs. 2,000 beyond corporation limits. Private
water tankers filling up from corporation sources will have to pay Rs.
200 a trip.