LAHORE, May 22: The Water and Sanitation Agency of the Lahore Development Authority is suffering an annual loss of Rs1.5 billion on account of delay in installation of meters on all water supply connections in the city. The agency supplies an average 300 million gallons of water to Lahorites daily from its 360 tubewells. The minimum cost of 109,500 million gallons of water supplied to its 500,000 consumers during a year is worked out at Rs2.4 billion at its minimum rate of Rs21.90 per 1,000 gallons, but it is recovering only Rs895 million because only 200,000 connections are metered.

The Wasa is reluctant to install meters on the remaining 300,000 connections for lack of resources despite a much higher income from the metered connections.

It is collecting an annual revenue of Rs558 million from 200,000 metered connections whereas the revenue collection from 300,000 unmetered connections is only Rs337 million per annum for the consumers are being billed in accordance with the annual rental value of their houses assessed by the Excise and Taxation Department.

The agency has been planning installation of meters on all its water supply connections since its creation in 1970’s, but has been able to install meters only on 40 per cent connections because most of consumers are reluctant to have meters installed on their connections for fear of increase in their bills.

A majority of the metered connections are those installed after the creation of the agency under its policy of ensuring installation of meters on all new connections.

One more reason for the failure to install meters on all its water supply connections is that the agency has to hand over 60 per cent of its earnings to Wapda in the form of power supply charges.

Its highups recently went to the extent of inviting the private sector to supply it 2,000 water meters on credit and receive payments gradually as the installation took place. Nobody came forward to oblige them obviously.