Water, sewerage board yet to recover Rs 3.5 cr from users

Raj Sadosh

Abohar, March 11

Even as the Union and state governments are, under the Amrut Yojana, going to extend water supply and sewage disposal facilities to each house in this subdivisional town with a budget allocation of Rs 100 crore, executing agency Punjab Water Supply and Sewerage Board is yet to recover Rs 3.48 crore as arrears of bills from existing users.

The Punjab State Power Supply Corporation Limited had in March 2017 disconnected supply to disposal and water works here due to the nonpayment of pending bills.

Sources in the sewerage board claimed that about 50 per cent of the 20,000 water connections were exempted from user charges as the size of houses was small. Other users had paid Rs 1.06 crore in the past five years; the recovery of Rs 2.31 crore is yet to be made. Similarly, about 8,000 sewerage facility users had paid only Rs 55 lakh in the past five years, arrears that mounted up to Rs 1.27 crore are yet to be recovered. As many as 2,900 families had got illegal connections legalised under special offer made by the state but hundreds of others were yet to respond.

PWSSB Sub Divisional Engineer Harsharanjit Singh said two teams had been deployed to recover arrears, about Rs 25,000 was being collected each day. Fifty big defaulters had approached courts to evade payments. “There are some willful defaulters too, their names may be made public through pamphlets if they fail to pay the arrears, he said.