KARACHI: The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) has devised a policy to increase revenue recovery from all sectors, said officials of the KWSB in a statement issued here on Monday.
The collection from provincial and federal government institutions and towns had been given to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the statement added.
On the directives of the KWSB managing director, a revenue recovery policy was formulated in this regard. The KWSB was also contacting all defaulters, whereas the KWSB managing director had written letters to all defaulting towns and institutions.
He had directed the officers of the Revenue Department to contact defaulters and discontinue their water supply through tanker service unless the pending payments were cleared.
The KWSB had written letters to all such departments currently acquiring water through tanker service. “However, dues are yet to be paid by some defaulting provincial and federal institutions,” officials of the KWSB said. The unpaid dues, it said, were of large sums of money and for this reason special instructions were issued to KWSB officials to address this problem.
“Strict action against these defaulters would be the last resort,” said the KWSB, while adding that last week, it had disconnected water supply to the City and Cantonment railway stations after repeated reminders while a court order was also sent to the Pakistan Railways to pay the Rs 140 million pending dues to the KWSB.
The KWSB also claimed to have discontinued the free tanker service after it became a financial burden on the institution. The paid tanker service from approved hydrants was still active and a computerised check and balance system had been established across all hydrants installed in the city.
However, these hydrants were bound to supply water within the given schedule only.
The KWSB had also written letters to different towns to pay their outstanding dues that were not cleared since the city nazim had handed over the water tanker service to the town administration.
“Administration of different towns were responsible for collecting money from tanker services during this time, however, years have passed and the KWSB has yet to receive the payments,” the KWSB officials lamented.
The KWSB had also involved Sind PAC in the matter, after which the Board had sent copies of the letters written to government institutions and town administrations to the quarters concerned so that the elected body could play its role in this regard, Board officials said.
