BENGALURU: With the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) recently being integrated with the state government’s Sakala Scheme, the delay in applying getting water or sanitary connection will come down. Under the scheme, any official who delays providing any service will be penalised.
The Karnataka Guaranteed Services to Citizens Act, 2011, was introduced to ensure government services be delivered punctually and transparently. Now, 725 services come under its fold. A senior BWSSB official told The New Indian Express that the Water Board’s online system to provide connections, launched in 2017, was integrated with the Sakala portal from May 18.
“The rules under the scheme are quite stringent and the deadline has to be adhered to. For instance, in the case a new water connection is sought, services must mandatorily be provided within 14 days, while in the case of multi-storied complexes, it must be provided within 42 days.”
BWSSB chairman Tushar Girinath said this would help keeping track of the works undertaken by officials.
“Any engineer or staffer who is responsible for delay in providing any service, will be penalised promptly. We will deduct the penalty from the individual’s salary,” he said.
Members of Bellandur Development Forum, who had been repeatedly requesting Girinath to do so, are relieved. “We had applied for new water connections on behalf of 95 flats, in November 2018. We did not get them even after six months. Repeated visits to the BWSSB office and following up with higher officials finally did the trick,” said president of the forum Vishnu Prasad.
Asked about the delay in the integration, a senior BWSSB official said, “It is an online service. We went online only two years ago. The deadlines under it were very tight. So, we repeatedly negotiated with the government to change the deadlines for the Water Board before bringing it under Sakala,” he said. For instance, only seven days for new connections and 21 days for multi-storeyed apartments was the time frame provided under it, he said. “We had to make the government give some leeway and increase the time to 14 days and 42 days respectively for a doable time frame,” the official said.