Arvind Kejriwal announces 'One Time Settlement Scheme' for pending water bills

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday announced the One Time Settlement Scheme for pending water bills of consumers in the national capital With approximately 276 lakh consumers in Delhi 117 lakh consumers have been burdened with outstanding dues amounting to a total of Rs 5737 crore the CMO statedUnder the new scheme effective from August 1 the government will completely waive off the pending water bills of 7 lakh consumers This initiative aims to provide immense relief to those who have been struggling to meet their obligations Addressing a press conference CM Kejriwal said Today we are announcing a major scheme for the residents of Delhi I think that the people of Delhi had been waiting for this for several months now The water bills of some residents have been accumulating for a while nowThere are several reasons for this The major reason is that during the Covid19 pandemic the meter reading for several households was not possible There were also some cases of people who were supposed to note down the water metre at the time providing incorrect data as they could not physically carry out their duties In some households wrong bills were sent and so on he said He said that there are 276 lakh domestic water metres in the city He said that out of this there are arrears on 117 lakh water billsDue to some reason or the other the people residing in these 117 lakh households have refused to pay their bills The total amount that these bills add up to is Rs 5737 crore If we tried to fix all these bills and get into the reasons for the anomaly then it would take us over 100 years to sort this out So it was not possible to do that Therefore we have come out with a onetime settlement scheme for such households he saidAll the bills have been divided into two categories The first category is the one in which there are two okay readings in these the metre reader has gone and read the bill twice at least and both parties acknowledge this The second category is the one in which there is either one or nil okay reading the CMO release addedIn the first case where there are at least twometre readings the average of the reading will be considered in such cases If there are three readings and if one of the readings is greater than double of the previous reading then it will be taken out of consideration In those cases where there is one or nil reading then we will look into the water bill of the neighbourhood Since the houses will be of the same size we will get the data from the DJB of the bills in the area and take out its average and this is the bill that the person will have to pay Kejriwal said He added that the state government hopes to sort out all of these 117 lakh pending water bills in the cityWhen we analysed the water bills of these 117 lakh households and applied the formulas of our onetime settlement scheme we noticed that over 7 lakh households will get a zero bill This is because their consumption will fall below the 20kilolitre mark that is already exempted by the state government So therefore for over 7 lakh consumers their bills will become zero and all of their arrears will be cleared off There are 15 lakh consumers who will fall in the category that is between 20 and 30 kilolitre The remaining fall over this limit he saidHe further expressed the belief that the onetime settlement scheme will go on to benefit most of the consumers in a major way This scheme has been approved by the DJB in their meeting today Now it needs to come to the Cabinet and there are some other formalities to be completed We believe that by 1st August it will all be done and we will be able to implement it after that It will be applicable for a period of three months he saidThe Delhi CM further added that the new bill that will be generated after August 1 will be based on this and the consumer will have three months to pay and clear off the bill If the consumer fails to pay the new bill within the threemonth period then they will fall back to the old policy Then the consumer will have to pay the pending bill and cannot avail the facility provided by this onetime settlement scheme he saidKejriwal added A lot of these problems have been caused either by incorrect meter readings or because the meter readers did not do their job properly The government is in the process of formulating policies that will bring an end to this problem and the details would be provided to the public in the due course of timeThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever