Plan to merge water, electricity bills

hyderabad: with a view to ensuring cent per cent billing and revenue collection, the hyderabad metropolitan water supply & sewerage board (hmws&sb) plans to tie-up with power distribution companies (discoms) to put in place a joint billing system. once the plans are put in place, electricity bill collectors would be entrusted with the job of collecting water bills too.the idea was mooted in view of the success of the spot billing concept introduced by the power distribution companies.according to water board officials, the concept has helped the distribution companies in improving their revenues. however, the board has been waiting for a while to implement the proposed system till the spot billing system stabilises, the officials added. of the 3.73 lakh consumers, only 1.3 lakh pay water bills on regular basis. most of the consumers complain about nonreceipt of bills or abnormal billing. if all the consumers pay their bills promptly, the water board would get rs 10 crore per month. now the board has been getting only rs 8 crore of which 50 per cent goes towards payment of power bills. the officials too are to be blamed for the non-payment of bills as the system of preparing and sending bills on regular basis is still not in place. speaking to the times of india, hmws&sb managing director m g gopal said each wing of the board was being streamlined to improve efficiency and revenues. we are according top priority to revenue collection and operational efficiency and our efforts started paying off well, he said. according to him, in september last, only 55,184 consumers paid their bills while in december, their numbers rose to 65,519. similarly, the number of the consumer paying their bills through e-seva centres is also on the rise. in august last, 17,009 paid through e-seva centres, while in december, 28,017 utilised the facility. we want to make every consumer pay his or her bill regularly. the board is slowly improving its financial position. unless the consumers pay, the board cannot continue to offer some of its services free of cost, gopal added.