Pune Municipal Corporation to restart fitting water meters

PUNE: The civic body will resume installing water meters from next week in the eastern parts of the city. The work was halted more than a month ago after the meter production was delayed due to a shortage of chips.
Aniruddha Pawaskar, head of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), water supply department, told TOI, "The situation has improved now. PMC has started getting the meters. The timetable for installation will be finalised from Monday."
According to PMC officials, the meters are imported from Germany and the civic body has received 12,000 meters in their latest delivery. Of these 8,000 have been cleared through customs and dispatched, with others arriving next week.
The process to install automatic water meters aimed at generating 24x7 water supply started around four years ago. However, the project failed to gather pace due to various reasons. Only one lakh meters have been fixed as opposed to the target of 3.18 lakh installations.
A civic official said that after the old consultant left there was no replacement for seven months, which is one of the reasons for the delay. PMC appointed a new advisor for the project in April 2022.
Another official said that opposition from local political leaders and workers has also caused delay in installation in some areas. The leaders opposed the road digging and other activities related to the installation. Threats were issued to some workers at the ground level too. The property owners, who have illegal water connections, had also opposed the installation.
The 24x7 water supply project's goal is of equitable water supply across the city. The project includes construction of 103 tanks, laying of a 1,600km pipeline network and water meters. PMC is expected to spend around Rs3,000 crore on this project.
According to PMC norms, if a property has six flats, one 1/2-inch connection is allowed; if the number of flats is 12, then one 3/4-inch connection is permitted; and for any property with over 24 flats, a one-inch connection is given.