Hyderabad: No one consumer has reported illegal water connections to the Water Board in five months. In this time, over 30,000 consumers have voluntarily disclosed their unauthorised connections, against the estimated 1.25 lakh illegal lines in the city.
Water Board managing Director M. Dana Kishore was surprised that no one had complained of an illegal connection. The board, he said, had offered 25 per cent of the penalty amount imposed on the illegal connection to those reporting them.
He said that apart from the voluntary disclosure scheme, the board had launched an ‘operations and maintenance monitoring’ mobile app. It had provided mobile phones with the app to linemen, who were to take photographs and forward them to senior officers. “The developments would be regularly monitored in command control and there will be more transparency in the system,” he said.
The board has made it mandatory for all 9.1 lakh consumers to install meters. Customers who instal water meters on their own will be given a discount of five per cent for a year.
