Collection of Rs 1K more to legalise water connection disappoints citizens

Aurangabad, Aug 26:

An air of disappointment prevailed amongst the citizens after the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) starts collecting Rs 1,000 more from the citizens by contacting the respective ward office to legalise their water supply connection.

The AMC believes that there are more than 1.5 lakh illegal water connections in the city. The civic administration constituted three squads to detect and disconnect illegal connections, but it is nearly impossible to take stringent action against such a large number of illegal connections. Hence as a way out, the civic administration appealed to the citizens to legalise their connections on payment of Rs 2,025 charges (50 per cent of the annual water charges of Rs 4,050). However, when the scheme got launched the AMC ward officials added Rs 1,000 to it as regularisation charges. This depicts that the AMC does not wants a large number of connections to get legalised.

It may be noted that the AMC’s special squads for the past few days are detecting and disconnecting illegal water connections. Earlier, they were unable to take action due to political pressure. The AMC officials were aware of the illegal connections but were helpless due to the interference of the civic body.

Today, the AMC squads are taking action as per the orders of the High Court. Hence, they are going in the field to take action without police security.

Meanwhile, all the ward officers have started implementing the scheme to legalise the connection. They are collecting Rs 2,025 as a one-year water tax in advance and Rs 1,000 as regularisation charges.

What is surprising is that the AMC administration had never spoken about the regularisation fee in the past. The sudden addition of Rs 1,000 is burdening as well as discouraging people from coming ahead to regularise their connections. Meanwhile, the citizens also drew the attention to additional monetary burden of greasing the palms of the officers' concerned in handling the issue.