Faridkot, November 6
A week after Punjab government decided to send a single bill for water as well as electricity to the consumers in three districts--- Faridkot, Amritsar and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar--- on an experimental basis to streamline the recovery of huge outstanding arrears of water bills, the Water Supply and Sanitation Department (WSSD) in Faridkot has started the process to sensitise the residents of villages that have defaulted to pay the water bills.
The WSSD has started organising public meetings in these villages, telling the people that the smooth supply of good quality drinking water is dependent on their payment of water bills. Otherwise, the residents have to rely on underground water which is not fit for human consumption as it contains high fluoride content and other heavy metals, said SK Grover, XEN, WSSD, Faridkot.
The smooth payment of water bills will help WSSD clear the outstanding dues of electricity bills to make the water pumps work and supply drinking water. The payment of water bills is so poor in most of the villages in the region that the PSPCL disconnected the electricity supply to 26 waterworks due to unpaid bills in the last two years. While the snapping of power connection failed to push the residents into paying the water bills to clear the arrear, most of these power-disconnected villages instead resorted to kundi connections to make the pumps work.
Five sub-divisions of WSSD in Faridkot have outstanding liabilities of over Rs 56 lakh to the PSPCL on March 31 this year. But the WSSD has to collect over Rs 2.5 crore from thousands of water bill defaulters.
The WSSD has been facing the same problem in other parts of the state. Sources in the department revealed that on March 31, the WSSD had to collect over Rs 107 crore of water bills from the defaulters in the state and the department has over Rs 46 crore outstanding dues to the PSPCL.
Considering it to be unnecessary, a large number of the people are reluctant to clear their water bills, said a WSSD officer. "The large amount of money is being paid as electricity bills to make the pumps work but the consumers are not paying the water bills. Therefore, the power supply has been disconnected," he said.
Thinking that the residents will be more concerned about paying the water bills when these are combined with power bill as defaulting will led to snapping of power connection, the state government has started working on this new experiment.
"Many villages in Faridkot have a large number of illegal water connections and we are trying to regulate these," said SK Grover.
