LAHORE, June 8: Recovery of over Rs674 million accumulated arrears of Water and Sanitation Agency has become doubtful as nobody has shown interest in its offer to recover the same against a lucrative 30 per cent commission. The agency had invited offers for expression of interest (EoI) for the recovery of its arrears on commission basis from the private sector last month. The parties interested in procuring the recovery contract were asked to approach the agency with details of their previous experience by June 7. The Wasa highups intended to award the contract after inviting bids from those interested in recovering the arrears for it.

District Nazim Mian Amer Mahmood had announced offering of 30 per cent commission to contractors on recovery of arrears at a press conference last week after a majority of around 100,000 refused to clear the dues despite offering an equal concession during two recovery campaigns launched last year and early this year.

He said nearly 30,000 defaulters paid Rs262 million to the agency after availing 30 per cent concession during the two campaigns. The Wasa teams had recovered Rs16.5 million in addition. The government departments had to pay Rs168 million to the agency.

A total amount of Rs896.4 million was due from 104,984 defaulters when the agency launched its second drive on Feb 1 offering 30 per cent concession.

The number of Wasa defaulters is increasing with the passage of time on account of its failure to devise an effective recovery strategy.

Every fifth consumer of Wasa is a defaulter of a total 500,000 at present. The agency continues serving disconnection notices on them but desists from doing so on humanitarian grounds but raises the water supply and sewerage charges for the consumers paying the bills after every few years to allow the defaulters to continue enjoying the free water supply facility at their cost.

No action was taken against the Wasa officials responsible for preventing the people from taking unauthorized connections when 50,000 connections were detected during a door-to-door survey two years back.