Margao : The Shadow Council for Margao (SCM) has alleged that the much hyped 16,000ltr free water offer of the government is unlikely to give much financial benefits to consumers in real terms.
SCM Convenor Savio Coutinho said, “Even the poorest of the poor are being taken for a ride with this offer. While this section of the Consumers are given to believe that they are the ones who are benefiting from this offer. However little do they realize that over the years they have been paying for 16000 litres of water even if they were actually consuming less than 16000 lts”.
Coutinho said, If one goes through their water bill, you will find something called minimum units, which is 16 units. This means that even if a consumer consumes less than 16000ltr, he still was charged for this quantity. In short, what the government has done is that the “minimum chargeable units for water connection has been removed”. And this benefit is minuscule, and that too only to a small section of consumers.
And on the other hand with the new slabs of water tariffs, the real concern will be to the residential units with higher consumption. As according to the new tarif, for a consumer who consumes 41 units, the bill will directly jump to Rs. 1,025/- as against the present bill of 446/- at the old tariffs(inclusive of the meter rent and inspection charges).
It is highly unjustified to burden the people with such exorbitant charges within a short span of less than a year. The last increase in the tariffs was in October 2020.
SCM has appealed to the government to reconsider the new slabs of 40/50 units introduced in the new notification, and the same should be withdrawn immediately.
