Kakinada: Tap connections will be given to all households and assessment holders in Kakinada city within one month.
To avoid water wars in public taps, the district collector H. Arunkumar has instructed the Kakinada Municipal Corporation (KMC) officials to sanction tap connections to all households including Below Poverty Line (BPL) and non-BPL categories.
Generally, the BPL families have to pay Rs 200 per tap connection by submitting their ration cards and house tax receipt copies.
Later, they have to pay installation charges from Rs 1750 to Rs 6, 000 depending on the distance from the pipeline to houses. The collector instructed the officials to lay connections without collecting installation charges for BPL families, sources said.
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu instructed all the district officials that no family should face difficulties to get potable water and sanction tap connections at the earliest. As part of his instructions, the officials are gearing up to sanction tap connections as soon as possible.
According to KMC officials, 31,880 tap connections have been sa-nctioned to the households in Kakinada city out of 70,000 assessme-nts, out of which 11,000 belong to BPL families. At present, 50 households have applied for tap connections under BPL category.
But, according to officials nearly 10,000 BPL families do not have tap connections and they are getting potable water from nearby public taps.
“We are taking up a special drive for sanctioning tap connections to BPL families from next week. The pipelines have to be laid for the places. Besides, nearly 16,000 tap connections have been sanctioned in AMRUT scheme. These will be also completed by giving tap connections to the households in a phased manner,” said the executive engineer M.V.V. Suryanarayana.
He said that new pipelines were being laid in the city for supplying quality water to the residents of the city. Meanwhile, the district collector H. Arunkumar instructed the KMC officials to give water tap connections soon by taking online registrations.
He suggested the officials to take applications from Slum Federations and Mee Seva Centers and give instalment facility to the households for paying registration charges and installation charges for the taps.
He said that as Kakinada will be turned into a Smart City, every household should be given water connections.
