VIJAYAWADA : The Tax Payers' Association has found fault with the arguments advanced by the officials of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) for fixation of meters to domestic water supply connections.

Association president V. Sambi Reddy and secretary M.V. Anjaneyulu alleged at a press conference on Wednesday that the officials were trying to create differences among people by raking up an argument that the poor were subsidising the rich.

This argument had no logic, as the corporation would always supply the same quantity of water for the same amount of time through the pipeline of 0.5-inch diameter for houses of both the rich and the poor.

While single tenement houses were able to use more water, the buildings that housed more than one family were consuming less quantity of water for each family.

It was wrong to divide the amount paid by each building by the number of people residing in it.

Contesting the argument that apartment complexes were paying less amount of charge for the water they consumed, Mr. Anjaneyulu said that the apartments were not depending solely on the inadequate quantity of water supplied by the VMC.

They were using the VMC-supplied water for drinking and ground water for other needs.

In any case, most of the apartments were already paying the charges on the basis of meter reading.

He said that the VMC's claim to supply water round the clock after fixing the meters could have no basis, as it was not able to supply water with adequate pressure for a couple of hours a day now.

It was also wrong on the part of the VMC officials to state that the 24-hour supply would put an end to the problem of contamination. This problem could be addressed better by laying pipelines that had no pores.

The Vijayawada Rate Payers' Association, in a statement, opposed the water meters proposal on the grounds that the conditions in Vijayawada were different from other cities and these should be taken into account before deciding on such a crucial issue.

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