The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has tabled a proposal in the Standing Committee to ease the penalty charges recovered from the housing societies in case their water meters get stolen or are tampered with.
If the water meter of a housing society would be stolen or tampered with, the general public avoided paying the prescribed penalty charges and cost of the water meter. Moreover, the local corporators would make repeated requests to the BMC to review the water meter penalty charges. In view of this, the BMC has brought some changes in its water tax rules and sewerage rules. It has fixed the validity of private meters for five years, and BMC-given meters for 10 years.
The proposal said that if a society is using a private meter and BMC finds the meter is faulty, then the society has to replace the meter within one month and after verification of the meter, the society will have to pay other charges to BMC before fixing the new or repaired meter. Now, the water department has suggested adding more conditions to this rule. BMC has fixed private water meter validity for 5 years. If the society wants to use private meters for more than five years, then it has to certify from the BMC every year that the meter is properly functioning.
However, if a BMC-installed meter gets stolen or tampered with, then the BMC is used to recover the entire meter cost and expenses like meter installation and penalty charges from society. Now, the BMC water department has proposed to change this rule. Now the BMC will not recover the entire amount of meter. The BMC will depreciate the value of the water meter by 10 percent every year and will levy remaining charges on society.
For instance, if the BMC-installed water meter was fixed two years ago then BMC will depreciate the value of the meter for two years and recover the remaining eight years cost of the meter from the society.
"Earlier the societies had to pay the entire amount of the meter as a penalty to the BMC irrespective of when it got stolen. Due to this there were several disputes between the BMC and the society. These new clauses will encourage citizens to replace their meters at the earliest and will also allow us to recover the outstanding amounts," said the official.
