The Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) has begun to serve legal notices on big water bill defaulters. Some of these bills are pending for over a decade. In view of summer, authorities have cautioned that if the defaluters do not clear the arrears, water supply will be cutoff. The total amount of arrears are about Rs 40 crore pending since 2000. Of this, only around Rs 6 crore is said to have been collected.
The single apartments and the slum settlements have to pay Rs 20 – 30 Lakhs. Political interference is said to make the bill collection difficult.
According to the authorities, the properties of the defaulter will be seized unless bills are cleared at the at the earliest.
There are around 4.8 lakh connections with a daily drinking water consumption, and about 53 lakh gallon supplied by HMWSSB under the SCB. There are around 900 bore-wells that take care of drinking water needs of SCB residents.
The authorities are appealing to consumers to clear the pending water bills on their own as soon as possible.
Source – The Hindu