FAISALABAD, June 27: The Water And Sanitation Agency has decided to privatize its billing and recovery wings.

Wasa sources told this correspondent on Friday that the agency had been facing financial problems due to poor pace of recovery of sewerage and water supply bills.

The sources said there were some 200,000 water consumers in different parts of the city out of whom over 100,000 had become habitual defaulters.

They said special recovery and raiding teams had tried their best to achieve the target of income from these accounts, but all efforts proved an exercise in futility. The Wasa administration had also called for help from Nazims and councillors of different union councils for the same, but to no avail, they said.

As a last resort, Wasa highups prepared a comprehensive plan for privatizing the recovery and billing section. The final draft in this regard had been moved to the governing body of the agency for approval, they said.

Recently Wasa had suspended water supply to over 100 localities on the pretext that recovery from these areas was below 10 per cent mark of the total amount, and a majority of the consumers of these colonies had become chronic defaulters. No formal prior disconnection notice or letter had been issued by Wasa officials to its consumers.

Connections of 30 residential and commercial localities of the city have reportedly been restored after an assurance by the inhabitants that they would not only pay the current bills, but also clear their longstanding dues in installments.