Lokmat News Network
Aurangabad, Feb 12:
The Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited (ASCDCL) has decided to fix ultrasonic water meters on the taps in the city, soon. Accordingly, the ASCDCL has decided to fix 5,000 meters on commercial water connections in the first phase. Meanwhile, the ASCDCL's Board of Directors (BoD) has okayed the proposal of valuing Rs 13 crore to install advanced technology-based water meters.
It may be noted that the state government has approved the new water supply scheme valuing Rs 1680 crore.
The Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP) has been appointed as nodal agency to implement and execute the project which is expected to be completed in the next two and a half years. Meanwhile, the MJP has opined to fix water meters on each connections so as to control the wastage of water. Hence the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and the ASCDCL have geared up to fix the meters. There are more than 5,000 commercial water connections in the city on AMC's record. Hence the decision has been taken to fix meters on commercial connections.
The ASCDCL's BoD in the meeting had gone through the proposal by the chief executive officer (CEO) A K Pandey and okayed it with permission to spent Rs 13 crore on the task.
According to the ASCDCL's assistant project manager Imran Khan, " The fixing of ultrasonic water meters is the latest trend in all over the world. This technology is going to last for the next 25 years. The supply of water (flow and its quantity) and meter-reading will be monitored by ASCDCL's Operation Command and Control Centre (CCC). The feature of the meter is that it will update the administration regularly. The system will bring transparency as the customer will have to pay the charges depending upon the quantity of water utilised through the tap. This will help maintain an equal supply of water and save additional expense on maintaining water supply scheme."
5K meters in stores
The then private company that was operating the parallel pipeline project (PPP) has procured 5,000 water meters, before its termination. These meters are lying in the AMC's store. Meanwhile, a committee comprising the city engineer S D Panzade, deputy CEO of ASCDCL Pushkal Shivam and MJP's retired engineer has been constituted to study over the usage of old stock of meters. The committee after studying the technical aspects will submit the report and further decision over its usage will be taken accordingly.