Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

389 complaints settled in KWA adalat

Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 389 consumer complaints were settled in the `adalat' organised by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) for its various sections in Thiruvananthapuram, Nedumangad, Attingal, Aruvikkara and Neyyattinkara on Monday.

While 278 of these were from consumers under various sections in Thiruvananthapuram, 41 were from Attingal, eight from Aruvikkara and 62 from Neyyattinkara. The high-level committee of the KWA that led the adalat included the Accounts member Girijavallabhan; Chief Engineer, South, R. Sukumaran; Superintending Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, K. Mohan; and Executive Engineer, Thiruvananthapuram, G. Sudev. For the purposes of the adalat, the committee was given the powers of the board of the KWA for settling disputes.

Consumers who turned up with complaints were directed to the 10 counters manned by the KWA staff. Problems that could not be sorted out at the counters were taken to the high-power committee.

The consumer complaints were for the most part bill disputes, problems of conversion from non-domestic to domestic category, faulty meters /readings and problems arising from transfer of ownership of property and water connection.

One such dispute brought to the adalat was that of Fr. V.P. Jose, manager, St. Antony's UP School, near Kattakkada. His case was that soon after the school took a water connection in 1991, the line was disconnected.

However, recently, the KWA sent the school a bill for Rs.52,000. Officials of the KWA realised their mistake and closed the case by waiving the entire amount stated in their bill.

Not everybody left the adalat as happy as Fr. Jose.

Janet Alexander, a resident of Valiathura, had come to the adalat hoping to get a full waiver on her water bill of Rs.1.22 lakh. The connection had been taken more than 20 years ago for a pan shop run by her husband, Alexander. "We never got any water from the tap. All these years we also did not get any bill. By the end of 2005, the KWA officials told us we have to pay more than one lakh rupees. My husband is dead. I don't have any money to pay the KWA," she told the KWA officials. They said the full amount could not be waived and that the best they could do was to allow her to pay a minimum amount under domestic rates and that too in several instalments. When Muraleedharan Nair, secretary of an NSS `Karayogam' at Ambalathara, came to the adalat, he was hoping to get the connection to the `Karyogam' office converted to a domestic line. He later discovered that domestic lines are given only to houses and not even to places of worship. He told the KWA officials that the `Karayogam' was unable to pay the water bill arrears of Rs.25,000 and urged them to disconnect the line.

Minister for Water Resources N.K. Premachandran said the KWA would take strict measures to recover bill arrears from individuals and institutions. The existing authority laws would be amended to include punitive provisions to check unauthorised use of water.

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