Nashik
Around 35,000 household water connections above a diameter of half an inch or commercial water connections in Nashik city will be equipped with smart water meters.
The Nashik Municipal Corporation has decided to replace the water meters of around 35,000 household connections in the city with smart water meters. With the installation of the smart water meter, consumers will get the bill online as soon as the month is completed and the bill payment can also be made online.
Property and water tax is the main revenue source of the municipal corporation, but due to failure to recover the taxes in time, crores of rupees are pending. The municipal corporation, which has been experimenting with various methods for tax collection, has now decided to install smart water meters for quick bill collection. This new smart water meter will be installed through Smart City.
In the meantime, the municipal corporation had also developed a special app to collect water bills, but this experiment also failed. There is a shortage of manpower in the tax department. Hence bill amount is not recovered in time.
There are about two lakh water connections in the city and suburban areas. In the current financial year, out of the total target of Rs.61 crore, only Rs.33.50 crore has been recovered. The tax collection department has the challenge to collect Rs. 28 crore in the next three months. However, there are complaints that many customers did not get the water bill. As the tax collection department is tasked with various works, the bill distribution is seen affected. Moreover, the tax collection department has only ninety employees. On the other, the water theft percentage is increasing. Considering all these aspects, the current water meters of around 35,000 household connections will be replaced with smart water meters.
