The Forum For Good Governance (FGG) today urged the State government to take steps to recover of dues of Hyderabad Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMS&SB) from different government departments.
It wrote a letter to Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar on the issue. In its letter, the secretary of the forum M. Padmanabha Reddy said different government departments, including the State and Central government departments, owed a total of ₹1519 crore to the water board. He said out of the total arrears, ₹1267 crore dues were owed by the State government departments and the remaining ₹252 crores is owed by the Central government departments.
He said the Mission Bhageeratha wing of the State government owed ₹601 crores, PR&RD department owed ₹594 crores to the water board. Revealing the names of more departments, he said the Health, Medical
and Family Welfare department owed ₹42 crores, Housing department (₹22 crores), Home department (₹15 crores), and GAD ₹9 crores.
Reddy told the Chief Secretary although he has been pursuing the matter for a long time, there was no response from the authorities concerned on the issue. He told
the CS that the main source of income for the Water Board was monthly water charges. He said the citizens of the city were regularly paying the water utilization charges and added that the board was facing problems due to the attitude of the government departments.
He said the water board was not able to procure new pipes in order to replace the old and rusted pipes due to a lack of funds causing a lot of problems to the people of the State capital. Referring to section 190 of GHMC Act 2018, he said property tax includes water tax, drainage tax, lighting tax, and conservancy tax and added that the payment of the property tax by a citizen meant that the citizen was also paying the water and drainage tax.
He told the CS that the water board was separately collecting the water amounting to the double payment of the water tax. He said the State government by not paying the arrears of its different departments, was setting a wrong example for the people of the State. He urged the CS to issue orders to all the concerned departments for the payment of the water dues.
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