Date:19/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/19/stories/2008111960600400.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

New Metrowater billing system’s benefits

Staff Reporter

Consumers in multi-storeyed buildings will stand to gain

CHENNAI: Chennai Metrowater consumers in multi-storeyed buildings with metered connections stand to save substantially on their water bills.

Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, Chennai Metrowater Managing Director Sunil Paliwal said a new system to equally divide the total water consumption among the apartments in a complex and issue separate bills to each of them was introduced in July. It has now been decided to make the system applicable with retrospective effect, beginning the billing period from January 2008. Chennai Metrowater had introduced the metering system from this year.

Explaining the benefits, he said that as the consumers would fall in the lowest slab rate of Rs.2.50 per kilo litre — for monthly consumption up to 10 kl — their bills would be reduced by 64 per cent.

He said that for instance, if the monthly water charges of a complex, comprising 15 apartments, consuming 337 kl of water under the old system was Rs.670 for each apartment, the charges under the new system would be Rs.235.

Earlier, Metrowater calculated water bills based on the total water consumption of the building leading to consumers paying bills as per the highest slab rate of Rs.25 per kl, he said.

On the implementation of water metering system in the city, he said that at present, Metrowater concentrated only on multi-storeyed and special buildings. About 38,000 such buildings have been identified so far and of these, about 17,100 have installed the meters.

The drive to issue notices to the remaining buildings has been slowed down to address various issues pertaining to water metering system, he said.

On the storage levels in reservoirs, he said that with the available resources, the city could be supplied water till May 2009. Chennai has also received 3.4 thousand million cubic feet of water since the Krishna water release four months ago.

Asked about the proposed desalination plant in Nemmeli, he said the detailed project report submitted to the Central government for approval was being processed.

AIADMK’s response

AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa on Tuesday threatened to launch an agitation if the DMK government failed to give up the proposed move to increase the water tariff.

In a statement here, she also urged the government to revise the tariff for the benefit of the consumers after fixing meters.