MCC also designs exclusive water tax collection vehicles to recover dues worth Rs. 180 crore

Mysore/Mysuru: The Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) and its water supply wing Vani Vilas Water Works (VVWW) are ready with a project to supply door-to-door drinking water and also to levy pending water tax through Digitalised Point of Sale equipment. For this purpose, eight dedicated vehicles have been modified and readied.

A few areas in the city face perennial drinking water problem and there is neither a scope of establishing RO (Reverse Osmosis) plants nor supplying water daily as the roads are very narrow. Areas like Udayagiri, Shanthinagar, Kalyanagiri, Rajivnagar, Lingambudhipalya, Nachanahallipalya and surroundings of J.P. Nagar face perpetual drinking water problem.

Though the MCC supplies water to certain areas, the huge water supply vehicles could not reach the tail-end consumers due to bad and narrow lanes. Also, there are no designated places for the MCC to set up RO plants like they have established in other areas despite huge demand.

To ease the problem, the MCC has customised six Tata Ace Mega vehicles and have mounted mini RO plants on them. Each vehicle can carry 1,000 litres of pure drinking water to any nook and corner of Mysuru city and even criss-cross in the narrow lanes and bylanes. Door-to-door drinking water delivery is achieved through these vehicles and people can fill water to their containers at homes.

Water tax collection vehicles

Desperate to mop up revenues in COVID times, the MCC has purchased two vehicles exclusively to collect pending water tax dues that stands at a whopping Rs. 180 crore. Named Cauvery and Kabini, these vehicles are equipped with Point of Sale machines so that water tax can be collected and receipts issued on the spot.

Each vehicle can carry eight persons from the Vani Vilas Water Works and if the dues are pending since a long time, such connections will be disconnected. A defaulter list has been prepared and armed with the list, the vehicles will land at doorsteps of citizens to collect dues.

There are over 1,70,000 legal water connections in Mysuru city and about 15,000 illegal connections. Of the Rs. 180 crore pending water tax money, Rs. 46 crore is the interest on the dues and Rs. 40 crore is pending water tax dues from many Government institutions.

Officials told ‘Star of Mysore’ that along with collecting the pending dues, they will install metres for illegal water connections and bring them into the legal bracket. Each water metre costs Rs. 1,500 and a budget of Rs. 2 crore has been sanctioned by the MCC to regularise all the illegal connections.