In a step to help people settle their pending water dues, the Delhi government on Friday announced a “One-Time Water Settlement Scheme”.

The scheme is aimed at addressing people’s issues regarding faulty water bills and solving the problem of revenue generation being faced by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) due to the non-payment of bills that are a result of faulty billing.

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Minister Atishi, while addressing a press conference here, said the problems related to the water bills were emerging due to various issues like faulty meter readings, sometimes no meter readings, and sometimes mistakes in meter readings due to multiple flats in a building.

She informed that on the directions of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the OTS proposal is soon going to receive a green signal from the Delhi Cabinet, and is expected to unlock Rs 2,500 crore revenue for Delhi Jal Board.

Most importantly the minister highlighted that during Covid times there was no meter reading was done for about one and a half years, and said as the reading was not done the billing was done on an average basis.

All customers availing of the scheme will need to get functional meters, as this will ensure that they come within the billing ambit of DJB, the minister said.

Giving an example of how the bill could be settled as per the scheme, she said, “If a consumer gets an inflated bill of Rs 1 lakh and based on his consumption pattern the bill is re-casted to Rs 7,000, then the consumer needs to pay a one-time settlement amount of Rs 7,000 only. If he pays up, then the entire amount will be adjusted. From the next billing cycle he will get a fresh bill. If he doesn’t pay the re-casted amount, he will have to pay the entire amount of Rs 1 lakh.”

Many people had a misconception about the automatic applicability of the Free Water Scheme and 100 per cent waiver of arrears under the previous scheme.

She said when a consumer notices that the bill that he received is more than that of water he consumed, in that case sometimes the consumer skips paying the bill, and at present, this is the situation with around per cent of the total consumers, which has become a big issue for the DJB, as when 40 per cent of the consumers will not pay bills, where will the water agency have its revenue from, she asked.