With several parts of the city reeling under severe water shortage, the Delhi Jal Board has started tightening its noose around those Central government offices and public sector undertakings whose total arrears of drinking water bills are reportedly to the tune of hundreds of crores. The DJB has started sending reminders to the big defaulters in the Central government establishments and PSUs to improve its financial health so that it is able to execute a series of projects. The water bills generated in the second and third week of April showed arrears to the tune of about Rs 188 crore were pending against the CGO complex and about Rs 82.62 crore against Northern Railway, Nizamuddin East. A bill generated on April 18 revealed that the CGO complex had consumed water worth about Rs 85.4 lakh in March-April. A private power company which had made the last payment of about Rs 1.3 lakh on August 15 last year owes about Rs 9.6 crore to the Jal Board.
While Lodhi Road office of the Cabinet Secretariat has arrears of about Rs 21 lakh pending against it, CPWD’s Sadiq Nagar office has to pay about Rs 1.2 crore to the Jal Board. Delhi’s IIT has to pay arrears of about Rs 12 crore and 1,005 residential flats in the institution’s campus owe about Rs 64 lakh to the DJB. Among other defaulters are the Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited, which has arrears to the tune of about Rs 1 crore, Hudco Palace in Andrews Ganj, which owes about Rs 63 lakh to the DJB, BRPL Ridge Valley‘s Daula Kuan Grid has arrears to the tune of about Rs 9.6 crore and the Vijay Nagar police station in Rohini owes about Rs 3.9 lakh to the Jal Board. As the AAP government is seriously working towards its poll promise to provide piped drinking water to one and all in the city, it has started a series of measures to ensure it gets back its arrears.
To address the issue of faulty meters that had inflated bills, the government waived off 100 per cent arrears to the consumers belonging to E, F, G and H categories, 75 per cent to D category, 50 per cent to C category and 25 per cent to A and B categories of colonies with complete remission of late payment surcharge.
People living in poor colonies were happy to see their long-standing disputed bills getting a complete waiver and those living in affluent colonies were more than willing to come forward to deposit their reduced arrears.
In his budget speech, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had said that revenue collection machinery was also happy as they were able to collect about Rs 20.27 crore from what were considered as dead receivables.
The government’s decision to provide 20 kilolitres of water free of cost to every household has directly benefited about 10 lakh families belonging to poor and lower middle class income groups.
