PHD told to pay Rs 10,000 fine for charging water rent without meter

(File)

THE PUBLIC Health Division (PHD) of the UT administration has been charging Rs 20 for two months as water rent from a city resident without installing any meter. The consumer forum has directed the department to reverse the illegally charged meter rentals from the complainant and if not, they should pay Rs 10,000 as fine. The complainant, Gulab Singh, alleged that he had been issued water connection for his residence after fulfilling all the required formalities by the PHD for which he also deposited Rs 13,610 in two instalments.

Singh stated that he had been honouring the bills thereafter without delay. However, the concerned UT department issued him notice to arrange the half-water meter expense at own source. The concerned department then failed to instal the water meter in the complainant’s house and kept charging the water bill based on an average of Rs 20 per bill as water meter rentals. Singh visited the office of the PHD a number of times with the request to instal a water meter, but they initially dilly-dallied on one pretext or the other before refusing to instal it finally.

Meanwhile, the UT, in a reply, stated that the house of Gulab Singh was outside the village redline where no waterlines/sewerlines or any other services have been provided by the Chandigarh Administration and as per policy, a bulk connection was sanctioned for the entire street where the house of Singh is situated and to avoid dispute of quantity of water utilised, the bill was charged on average basis at 80 k/ltr for two months from all the consumers.

The UT also replied that the requisite amount deposited by Singh was for the water used by him and no fee for installing the meter was deposited by Singh. It was also asserted by UT in reply that when manual bills were issued, the meter rental was not charged from consumers. However, during computerisation, the meter rent was charged by default as there was no option in the existing software.

Meanwhile, the consumer forum said UT had itself admitted to charging meter rental from Singh despite the fact that they have not installed any water meter on the complainant’s premises. The forum has directed the concerned UT department to reverse the illegally charged meter rentals to Singh and if not done, then it should pay Rs 5,000 as compensation and Rs 5,000 as cost of litigation.