Karnataka - Mangalore

Private agency to issue water bills from December 1

— Photo: R. Eswarraj

No change: Water meter in a house near Balmatta in Mangalore.

MANGALORE: The Mangalore City Corporation has entrusted the task of issuing spot water bills to consumers in 11 revenue wards to a private agency from December 1 on an experimental basis, according to official sources.

M. Maheshwar Rao, Administrator of the corporation, is understood to have given green signal to it, sources in the corporation said.

Water meter readers of the corporation will no longer visit the households and commercial establishments from revenue ward number 10 to 20 from Saturday. This work will be taken over by a private agency at Kodialbail.

Revenue wards are different from wards bifurcated for conducting elections to councillors. The revenue wards handed over to the private agency comprise Hampankatta, Bunder, Kankanady, parts of Attavar, Pandeshwar, Car Street, Shivabagh, Kadri, Balmatta, Falnir and the Central Market. It also covers water connections given in Idya industrial area and Surathkal. The agency will have to issue bills to 12,000 water connections. Of these, about 800 are in Idya industrial area and Surathkal. There are about 68,000 authorised water connections in the corporation limits. The agency will get Rs. 6.70 from the corporation for every challan or bill issued. The consumers in these wards will have to remit the bill amount to a specified account at the Corporation Bank. The fourth elected council whose term ended in June, had taken a decision to outsource meter reading. It had decided that those meter readers should issue bills only to commercial and non-domestic water connections and not domestic connections. The corporation recently passed a resolution to include domestic connections in the scheme which the administrator has approved. Sources said that the corporation did not have adequate number of meter readers. It was not possible for the corporation to issue water bills every month. As a result, many consumers were getting bills once in three months or more.

If the outsourcing system is successful, the corporation is likely to extend it to other wards. The agency has been directed to issue bills according to the reading on the existing meters which are not tamperproof. The sources said that the corporation had not taken any decision to replace the old water meters with tamperproof meters.

Sources admitted that many commercial establishments were meddling with the meters.

The corporation could have avoided this by installing advanced meters and bolstered its revenue.

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