LAHORE, Jan 10: Disappointed by the results of concessional arrears' payment scheme, District Nazim Mian Amer Mahmood has given a go-ahead for launching the recovery of Water and Sanitation Agency arrears exceeding Rs840 million from nearly 97,000 defaulters as land revenue.

A sum of Rs60 million had been deposited by a fraction of the defaulters out of the accumulated arrears of Rs900 million despite a liberal 30 per cent concession offered by Wasa in last year under a directive of the Nazim.

A majority of the defaulters simply ignored the offer despite the threat of recovery of total amount of arrears after the expiry of the amnesty period, which ended last month.

The Nazim said 20 per cent of the arrears were not recoverable, but the remaining amounting to nearly Rs500 million could be recovered.

District Officer (revenue) Malik Muhammad Bakhsh told this reporter that the CDG had decided to start the Wasa arrears' recovery operation from Data Ganj Bakhsh Town by arresting the defaulters and putting them behind bars, as none had bothered to clear the dues despite the service of notices under the Land Revenue Act. The operation will be launched in other towns as well later.

He said the teams, headed by the assistant district officers (revenue), had been constituted to arrest 343 defaulters in Data Ganj Bakhsh Town and put them behind the bars in case they failed to clear the arrears. He said the defaulters could be detained for 40 days for the recovery of arrears as land revenue under the law.

Wasa Director Finance Riaz Hakim said the arrears had accumulated because nearly 20 per cent of the 485,000 consumers were not paying the water supply bills, as the agency seldom disconnected the water supply due to lengthy process of digging for locating the underground connection. Some of the defaulters had not paid the bills for years.

He said the agency had detected nearly 50,000 unauthorized water supply connections during a door-to-door checking and got the same regularized without imposing penalties. It had now asked the 3,000 consumers with domestic water supply connections and unauthorized connections using water for commercial purposes to get their connections regularized by Jan 22.