KARACHI: Rather than taking any stern action against bill defaulters, City Mayor Wasim Akhtar has offered an ‘incentive’ of 25 per cent relief to subscribers who pay their bills.

According to sources, the 25 per cent relief has been given to citizens who are using the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s municipal utility service, but have not paid their bills to the KMC for a long time.

Some citizens said that the incentive was tantamount to rubbing salt into the wounds of law-abiding citizens who used the KMC’s municipal utility services and regularly paid their bills, and if they failed to pay their bills once the KMC in their next bills would impose a fine of substantial amount on them and they paid their bill with the fine.

The KMC rather than taking stern action against the long-time defaulters, like suspending / disconnecting its services to them, was pampering these lawbreakers by offering relief of 25 per cent as an incentive, forcing the law-abiding citizens and timely bill payers to think that they should also stop paying their bills and after many years the KMC would give them such an incentive again, some citizens said while speaking to Dawn.

Meanwhile, a KMC statement issued on Sunday said that the mayor had offered all municipal utility service users a concession of 25 per cent if they paid their total bills with all the arrears, up to September 2018.

By this step the consumers are being offered a concession.

The KMC has also issued municipal utility service charge bills for January-March 2018. The last date for consumers in district Central is July 20; for district East (July 28); districts West and Malir (July 27); district South, W division and Industrial Area (July 30). The consumers have been asked not to wait for the last date and pay the bills immediately.

However, the sources said that why the consumers would make the full payment of the bills when they knew that if they did not pay the full bills regularly, the mayor after many years would provide them a relief of 25 per cent or even more.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2018