HMWS&SB sets deadline to fix meters till Sep 30

The Hyderabad Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) has set September 30 as the deadline to set up meters for all the consumers, failing which they would have to pay double the meter charge as penalty.

The Water Board sent out SMSs to about three lakh consumers in this regard on Sunday. Interestingly, the SMS mentions the deadline as “within 10 days”. But the officials on Monday clarified that the last date was September 30, 2016.

Presently, there are 8.79 lakh domestic consumers with the Water Board, of which only 1.61 lakh have working meters. The remaining consumers either have meters fixed but are defunct or do



not have meters at all.

Water Board director (Revenue) D Sridhar Babu said, “There are close to 1.9 lakh consumers who do not have meters. We want to bring all these consumers into our network.” The Water Board supplies 355 mgd of water every month, of which 20 per cent is not billed or comes under Non Revenue Water (NRW).

Babu said that the consumers would be given two months’ time to set up meters and there were empanelled agencies at all Water Board offices in the city from where they could buy the meters. The cost of the meter is between Rs 900 and Rs 1,500. The last date for affixing meters was September 30, 2016.