Water board to install 1,650 RFID meters in Jubilee Hills, Chintal Basti areas

Hyderabad: Setting its sights on increasing revenues and reducing use of unaccounted water, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) has decided to install 1,650 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) meters in Jubilee Hills and Chintal Basti areas.

Under a pilot project, the existing conventional meters in these areas will be replaced with RFID meters. The cost of installing the meters will be borne by the Board, HMWSSB Director (Revenue) D Sridhar Babu said during a meeting with officials.

Installation of RFID meters would help in reducing use of unaccounted water, besides aiding in transparency, he said. There were about nine



lakh water connections in the city, of which nearly two lakh consumers installed water meters. About 1.5 lakh connections were in the slums and about 5.5 lakh connections did not have meters.

Close to two lakh water connections were fixed with mechanical meters. However, a majority of the meters were either defunct or tampered. To fix all these issues, the Water Board was now working on fixing RFID meters.

To this effect, Board had held a meeting with RFID meter agencies in the city last month. During the meeting, the manufacturing agencies informed the authorities that RFID meters were also being supplied to Water Boards in Delhi, Pune and Mumbai.