Civic body plans to disconnect illegal water tap connections

Nellore: The civic authorities are now planning to check illegal tap connections in the city and started conducting a survey on both residential and commercial connections. There are about 32,200 domestic-tap connections in the city and the number is small when compared to the total number of houses.

There are 6,000 connections in the panchayats which have been merged in the municipal corporation. In fact, there are 1.50 lakh families residing in the civic body limits. People have to pay Rs 2,400 as water tax for domestic connections in city and Rs 1,200 in the case of panchayats merged in the civic body.

Officials have been collecting Rs 40 lakh per annum as water tax from 765 commercial buildings in the municipal corporation. There are around 15,000 illegal water connections in the municipal limits and the civic body is incurring a loss of around Rs 3 crore per annum, according to sources.

Now, officials of Public Health and Engineering wing of the corporation have started supplying drinking water to some colonies and laying new pipelines from Sangam. The authorities have linked the new pipelines with the water tanks in the city also.

"The Corporation has already started the supply of drinking water through new pipelines from Sangam. Within three months, the distribution system with new pipelines will be streamlined.

The old pipelines will be replaced with new ones and illegal tap connections in the city will be checked," said a senior official from the municipal corporation. The project of supplying purified drinking water to the population by installing RO plants in all divisions has been shelved.

The Municipal Administration Department had issued an order last year releasing Rs 24.90 crore to set up these Reverse Osmosis plants in and also planned to attach funds from the local industries as part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The project was shelved after the new government came to power.