No late fee now on water board bills

The city government on Wednesday waived late payment surcharge of Delhi Jal Board water bills in the domestic category.

In cases related to arrears in water and sewerage bills, consumers will be required to pay only the current charges now.

Chief minister Sheila Dikshit said for settling the balance arrears in the bills, a campaign will be launched soon for two months for the benefit of consumers.

“In order to provide relief to consumers, it has been decided to waive off late payment surcharge in arrears for domestic consumers. This will reduce individual arrears substantially, thus minimising hardship to people,” said Dikshit.

“The DJB will also organise special camps across Delhi to resolve billing issues for the next two months,” she said after charing a meeting with DJB officials.  She said the decision has been taken as a large number of people have been worried over arrears in their bills. She said DJB has been working overtime to connect regularised colonies to its piped water supply network.

Earlier in the meeting, MLAs cutting across party lines participated in an interaction and expressed their views on various issues related to water supply. A BJP MLA is known to have requested to levy a charge on supply of drinking water by tankers in JJ clusters and other low-income group colonies.

This was strongly opposed by ruling party MLAs. Besides, a number of suggestions were placed by MLAs, which included billing on monthly basis, slab-based charges in respect of resettlement colonies, JJ clusters and janta flats, and calculation of single meter connection bill on the basis of floors in a particular plot so that consumers could get benefit with lower slab charges.