KARACHI, May 16: The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board is on the verge of bankruptcy because of its inefficient water and sewerage bill collection system and rampant malpractices in the revenue and finance departments, well-placed sources said on Wednesday.

The sources said that the board’s declining financial strength could be gauged from the fact that the water utility was facing an annual deficit of Rs3 billion and, as such, was unable to save a single penny even for meeting the cost of operation and maintenance of its mostly outdated infrastructure in order to keep the system running.

While the KWSB’s annual demand draft stands at Rs5 billion with major heads being energy charges (Rs1.6 to 1.8 billion), routine operation and maintenance (Rs1.5 billion), and overhead and establishment expenditure (Rs2 billion), its revenues remain just Rs2 billion, showing a deficit of Rs3 billion, according to the sources.

“Though the KWSB revenue department is required to generate Rs4.5 billion yearly from its 1.4 million consumers, its revenue department officials are hardly collecting Rs2 billion under the head of water and sewerage charges,” they added.

Quoting from an official document titled ‘Performance Review’, the sources said that it had clearly been mentioned in the document that the inefficient and incompetent administration and the finance and revenue staff were thriving on malpractices and weakening the utility.

About the factors contributing to the poor recovery of water and sewerage bills from consumers, the sources said the main reason was ad hocism being practised in almost every department of the KWSB, particularly the revenue department headed by a grade-18 officer, though it was a grade-20 position.

“Isn’t it strange that officials of the revenue department neither ensure the delivery of monthly water and sewerage bills to the consumers’ houses nor do they make any effort to cover more consumers?” they asked.

Suggesting another reason, the sources revealed that despite being overstaffed (eight employees per 1,000 consumers), the KWSB was technically understaffed and ill equipped whereas it lacked professional skills to evaluate the utility’s performance from within.