Drive to regularise water connections to be intensified

MCC to regularise 30,000 plus connections in a year

With Mysore City Corporation (MCC) serving notices to several industries, educational institutes and residences with illegal water connections, many have voluntarily come forward to regularise their water connections.

 With more than 30,000 connections yet to be regularised by MCC, kiosks will be set up in several key locations of the city, to make it easy for people to apply for regularisation.

The regularisation process was initiated after objections were raised regarding the actual number of water connections in city limits. While MCC had estimated the connections to be around 1,20,000 in 2009, Jamshedpur Utilities and Supplies Company (JUSCO), to which water supply in the city was outsourced to, had claimed that there were a total of 1,74,950 connections in city limits. This disparity, had caused a financial burden on MCC, with around Rs 83 crore in water bills had been kept pending.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Executive Engineer of Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board (KUWSDB) said that the civic body was also contemplating taking assistance of NGOs, to help the regularisation procedure in densely populated areas of the city. 

He said that kiosks are also being opened in select localities to help residents with illegal water supply with regularisation. “Recently, such a kiosk was opened at ward number 55 of the corporation, where a large number of residents turned up. Such kiosks will be opened at other wards soon,” he said.

Assistant Executive Engineer of KUWSDB, D Umesh Chandra said that of the number of illegal connections, 2,500 have been regularised recently. “Applications of residents of three to four wards are currently under process, and will be regularised soon,” he said.He added that the regularisation process will be taken up in a phased manner, and predicted that the process would be completed within a period of six months to a year.

On pending bills, he said that the civic body has identified long term defaulters and short term defaulters and was on the process of recovering bills from them. “A separate team has been formed by Vani Vilas Water Works for the collection of such bills,” he added.

Shoukat Pasha, Corporator of ward number 55, where the drive was held recently, said that out of the 1,800 water connections in the ward, more than 1,300 connections were regularised recently. “While welcoming the regularisation drive, residents have also demanded for new water lines. The Corporation has assured them the same, if all connections are regularised in an area,” he said.

Problems

He said there were some problems with the regularisation drive, as few persons had received exorbitant bills. “Clearly, there has been some errors in the bills of few residents. We have communicated the same to the civic body,” he said.

Highlighting other problems, he said that tenants of rented houses, to which water connections were regularised recently, have refused to pay the arrears. “They say that they are made to pay the bills of a period when they were not the inhabitants of the house. This is an issue in several places. A decision to tackle this problem will be taken up in the council,” he said.