Times of India: Nagpur: Thursday,
April 24, 2014.
Like the
property tax department, the civic body's water works department (WWD) has also
performed poorly in recovering bills. The city has 2,07,924 connections, of
which 1.84 lakh are domestic consumers, 3,887 commercial, 43,134 institutional
and 15,147 in slums.
Responses to
RTI queries by activist Sanjay Agrawal reveal the WWD has outstanding dues of
over Rs 104.96 crore from 79,937 connection holders across the city.
Interestingly, NMC itself is included in the defaulters list, along with the
police commissioner's office, forest department, railway, AG office and central
government's public works department.
WWD has also
admitted that in 2013-14 the department raised demand notes for Rs 82.44 crore
but failed to recover the bills fully. This, and the Rs 104 cr arrears, has
raised serious questions over recovery process of the department.
The
defaulters list says NMC has outstanding bills of Rs 27.32 lakh, while the
railways have not paid Rs 15.20 lakh. City police too has failed to clear
outstanding water bills of Rs 42.28 lakh. Another civic agency, Nagpur
Improvement Trust, has defaulted on Rs 5.58 lakh water bills. Neeri too
features in the list with Rs55.16 lakh outstanding water dues. The biggest
defaulter among government departments is the forest department. The department
has to pay Rs 1.69 crore as water dues.
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