SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) has directed its officials to complete 100 per cent billing, resolve long-pending disputes and step up recovery of dues, with its Managing Director Ashok Reddy asking teams to focus specifically on high-priority defaulters.
Reddy, along with Joint Managing Director Mayank Mittal, reviewed revenue performance with Executive Directors, Directors and senior officials on Thursday, August 27, examining zone, circle and division-wise data on unbilled and unpaid connection accounts (CAN), demand and collection figures through a dedicated revenue dashboard.
MD flags water supply to long-defaulting accounts
Reddy expressed dissatisfaction that water supply was continuing to some connections despite dues pending for years and directed officials to inspect such accounts on the ground, resolve any metering, billing or other issues and recover the outstanding amounts.
At the same time, he said indiscriminately disconnecting connections merely because dues were pending was not the right approach, noting that excessive disconnections tend to increase disputes and can ultimately hurt revenue collection instead of improving it.
Officials were told to prioritise identifying and resolving the underlying issue and then recovering the amount owed, rather than defaulting to disconnection.
Reddy directed that officials themselves personally intervene in cases of long-pending dues, based on a graded system. General Managers are to contact consumers with dues pending over five years, Deputy General Managers those with dues over a year and the concerned Manager those with dues over six months.
Any billing, metering or other disputes in these cases are to be resolved and followed up with recovery action.
Each manager has been assigned 10 high-priority CANs to resolve, after which another 10 will be allotted, with progress to be reviewed after three days. Officials were also asked to prepare top-10 and top-100 defaulter lists and hand them to field staff for continuous follow-up.
Circle-level committees for pending disputes
To resolve disputes pending over issues such as bulk connections, missing meters and old bills, Reddy directed the setting up of circle-level committees comprising four to five officials each, meeting once a week to examine and resolve at least 10 to 15 disputes per sitting, with clear guidelines to be framed for the process.
Officials were also asked to study discrepancies in docket average billing over a 15-day period and prepare an analytical report.
AI-based dashboard to strengthen collections
Joint Managing Director Mayank Mittal said the revenue dashboard, being built using artificial intelligence (AI), would help quickly identify billing status, dues, collections, disputes and high-priority CANs, from the zone level down to individual connections, allowing officials to pinpoint where billing is pending, where collections are low and which connections need special attention.
He said the AI-based dashboard would be rolled out in the coming days.
SOURCE : SIASAT
