NEW DELHI: The Delhi government on Friday extended its scheme offering a one-time waiver of water bill arrears and late payment surcharge till March 31. “We have decided to extend the last date for Delhi Jal Board’s scheme to enable more consumers to pay their water bills at reduced rates without facing any financial burden or difficulty. Till date, over 4.5 lakh consumers have availed benefit of this scheme and the DJB has earned `632 crore in revenue,” DJB Chairman Satyender Jain said.
Under the scheme, launched in August last year, all categories of houses get an exemption from late fee payments, while their pending water bills are waived partly or fully depending on the housing category. The scheme will cover the consumers whose bills were pending till March 31 last year.
Delhi’s colonies are categorised from A-H. A-D category colonies are considered as middle and upper-middle residential areas. For ‘A’ and ‘B’ category colonies, 25 per cent rebate is given on their principal arrears while in the ‘C’ category colonies, 50 per cent waiver is provided. In ‘D’ category colonies, people get a waiver of 75 per cent on their principal pending arrear.
Jain also inspected the Chandrawal Water Treatment Plant and directed the concerned officers to get the production capacity of Phase-I increased upto 39 MGD on an immediate basis. During the visit, Jain noticed that 8 MGD Recycling Unit was also lying defunct and immediately instructed the officials to make it functional.
“Functioning of 8 MGD recycling plant and up gradation of production capacity of Phase-I of the Chandrawal WTP by 4 MGD will increase the water production by 12 MGD,” he said. “This increased 12 MGD will be supplied to the areas under the ambit of the plant. Every drop of water is precious and all treatment plants will be made zero liquid discharge so that there is no wastage. All the leakages are mandatory to be tapped and its misuse will not be tolerated,” Jain added.