Unpaid water bills continue to haunt the cash-strapped Kerala Water Authority (KWA) despite attempts to recover the dues.
At the end of July this year, local bodies alone owed the KWA ₹1,072.13 crore in water bill arrears, show data released by the water utility.
These dues pertain to the water supplied to 97,630 street taps in panchayat, municipality and Corporation limits across Kerala.
Panchayats owe the KWA ₹401.55 crore and municipalities and the six Corporations, ₹405.30 crore and ₹265.28 crore, respectively. The water bill debts of local bodies was up from ₹1,003.54 crore in April this year, show KWA data.
Among the six Corporations, Kochi Corporation owes ₹140.12 crore, Thiruvananthapuram ₹59.30 crore, Kozhikode ₹44.09 crore, Thrissur ₹20.30 crore, Kollam ₹1.3 crore and Kannur Corporation ₹15.96 lakh.
There are around 1.18 lakh street taps across the State.
The debt of LSG institutions form the major chunk of the total water bill dues, according to the KWA and Water Resources Department. Figures presented by Water Resources Minister Roshy Augustine in the Legislative Assembly clearly illustrate this point. Of the ₹1579.69 crore owed by water consumers to the KWA as on May 31, panchayats, municipalities and corporations accounted for ₹10,36.67 crore.
In a bid to collect the dues, the Water Resources department had asked the Additional Chief Secretary (Local Self-Government department) to recover them from the plan funds of the local bodies. No decision has been finalised in this regard, a senior KWA official said.
The KWA, which runs on a loss, itself faces difficulty in paying its power bills to the Kerala State Electricity Board. As per provisional figures presented in the State Assembly, the KWA reported a loss of ₹161.28 crore in 2023-24.
