Civic body to recover 237cr from water, sewerage bills

Ludhiana: Focusing on maximum recovery of pending dues for generating revenue, the fund-starved municipal corporation (MC) has decided to act against defaulters in the commercial users’ category.
As of now, a total of Rs 185 crore is pending in charges for water supply and sewerage while another Rs 52.02 crore is pending in disposal bills
The officials have been told to start checking commercial and industrial premises for the recovery of pending as well as the current bills. The MC is now planning to tap into this amount of Rs 237.02 crore to help get the required funds.
There are as many as 2.93 lakh legal water supply and sewerage connections, out of which 1.53 lakh come under exemption, while water supply bills are recovered from 1.39 lakh consumers. For the water and sewerage services this year, Rs 48.52 crore is pending and Rs 126 crore is arrears of previous years, besides another Rs 11.34 crore which is outstanding in the form of interest. Similarly for disposal services, 18,645 bills were dispatched and Rs 12.52 crore is pending for the current year, while Rs 39.49 crore is pending for the previous years.
Already for the water supply and sewerage dues, the previous Congress government had announced to waive-off all the bills for the residential properties, and for the current billing cycle too every household is only being charged a nominal fixed rate of Rs 50.
The maximum recovery is to be done from the commercial consumers. The officials claimed as previous government had waived-off dues, the residents are once again expecting to get their dues waived-off ahead of the upcoming MC elections.
The zonal commissioner Jasdev Sekhon said, “We have directed the concerned officials to depute SDOs and JEs on this recovery drive, and visit the properties personally just to ensure whether the properties still exist there or it is closed now.”
He added that first they will ask the consumers to clear the outstanding dues as soon as possible, but in case they fail to do the same, then strict action will be taken against them.
Notably, the recovery of water supply and sewerage dues has remained a major cause of concern for the civic body as the authorities have failed to take any stringent measures against defaulters. It is due to the lenient attitude of the MC officials that earlier also, Rs 400 crore was outstanding in water supply and sewerage usage.
These outstanding dues were waived by the previous congress government. If authorities do not act even now, then outstanding dues will again increase.
There is a need to take strict measures, but the civic officials failed to get water meters installed in the city to keep a check on wastage of water.