Private housing societies to pay for using water through tubewells.

Byline: Aamir Yasin

RAWALPINDI -- The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) on Friday decided to charge private housing societies for extracting water through tubewells.

'As many as 244 private housing societies in Rawalpindi will have to pay for the water which they extract through tubewells. It will also be mandatory for the societies to get a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) for installing a new tubewell in any private housing society,' RDA Chairman Arif Abbasi told Dawn after meeting senior officials of the RDA and Wasa.

He said officials at the meeting discussed financial problems being faced by Wasa and steps to increase the revenues of the authority.

'The government is not increasing water tariffs this year as it does not want to increase the burden on the citizens. But to overcome the financial crisis, we have decided to impose a fee on tubewells in private housing societies.'

He said a two-phase policy had been formulated to collect water charges from all legal and illegal housing societies.

In the first phase, the private housing societies will be asked to pay the charges to Wasa and in the second phase all government organisations using tubewells will be sent water bills.

He said the housing societies would be charged for using water from the date when electricity was installed in their area.

'Some housing societies were established in 1993 and we will charge them for using water from that date.'

He said Wasa officials presented findings of a survey of houses in private housing schemes in Rawalpindi city which showed that more than 75,000 housing units were using water extracted through tubewells but they did not pay any fee to the government or the civic body.

'Wasa will charge a minimum of Rs7,500 per month for a tubewell and the amount would be collected from the housing societies with effect from the last 10 years along with a fine.'

Mr Abbasi said a letter would be written to the private housing societies after a board meeting of the RDA. The policy has been formulated and it will be implemented after the board's formal approval. He said there was no need for permission...