Chandigarh
The municipal corporation is all set to double the water-supply charges of all segments—residential, commercial, industrial, or institutional. The agenda item is coming up in Monday’s monthly house meeting for discussion and approval.
The civic body wants to make up for the huge losses in supplying water and getting money against that. A source in the MC said: “Since we have started giving the consumers an additional water supply of 29 MGD (million gallons a day), it will cost us about Rs 200 crore a year, while the public pays us only Rs 80 crore or so. This is quite a big gap and water charges are unrevised for the past many years. The agenda item is being finalized.”
A few months ago, the general house of the MC had rejected the same proposal, saying let’s first give consumers that additional water supply. Now that additional water has come, the engineering department has gone back to the plan. In the detailed agenda being prepared, it has mentioned the water charges of Punjab and Haryana in an attempt to show that Chandigarh’s water bills are way lower compared with those of its neighbouring cities. The MC source said: “We collect very less water charges, so an increase in justified.”
