PESHAWAR, Sept 16: The provincial exchequer is suffering heavy financial losses every year because of poor recovery of water charges and mismanagement on the part of the authorities of the water supply and sanitation department of district governments, official sources told Dawn here on Thursday.

The financial losses suffered each year run into several hundred million rupees when the total income recorded by public sector's tube wells is compared with their annual expenditure.

In all, a well-placed official of the provincial government said, the province spent around Rs1.7 billion every year on the maintenance and management of thousands of tube wells installed to supply drinking water to households across the province.

Major chunk of the funds spent on tube wells goes to serve the monthly electricity bills which are taken care by the district-based water supply and sanitation departments.

Against the Rs1.7 billion annual expenditure, said the official source, a total collection of close to Rs700 million was made collectively by all the district governments. As a result, the provincial exchequer suffered a net financial loss of around Rs1 billion every year.

"This shows the gross mismanagement and negligence on the part of the district-based authorities," said the officer who has been involved in a recently conducted exercise which was meant to make the district governments pay their monthly electricity bills well in time to avoid paying penalties on account of surcharge - charged in the case of delayed payment - to the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda).

Officials said that the situation was alarming and warranted immediate attention on the part of the concerned authorities of the provincial and district governments to put the affairs of the water supply and sanitation departments in order.

Not only that recovery of water charges required to be improved, said the sources, there was a greater need to take appropriate measures to put an end to the increasing instances of water theft (from the water supply pipelines) and power pilferage in some of the districts.

"In certain areas it has been found that people have illegally taken connections from the power supply lines of the public sector tube wells," said the officer. It was because of huge financial losses that the provincial government had undertaken a move, some time back, to hand over to community-based organizations hundreds of those tube wells that were installed under the foreign funded social action programme in mid 1990s.

However, the provincial government's move did not receive much success because of lukewarm response meted out by the communities who, according to sources, were reluctant to take over the tube wells because of the expenditure incurred on their maintenance and operations every month. "Electricity bills were one of the major reasons of hesitation on the part of communities," said a development planner.