THE Rajshahi Water Supply and Sewerage Authority tripled the water tariff in February 2022 to cover losses in the production cost. The supply water agency spends Tk 8.90 on the production of a unit of water, or 1,000 litres, and sells it to household consumers for Tk 6.81 a unit and to commercial consumers for Tk 1.366 a unit over a supply network spanning 612 kilometres after extracting groundwater. But what remains the problem, so far left unattended, is that the utility agency has incurred Tk 410 million in five years because of non-revenue water loss, as an audit report of the agency shows. Official documents show that the non-revenue water loss of the agency is 29.87 per cent of the total water production. The daily demand for water in the city is about 135 million litres, but the agency can produce 107 million litres, leaving a shortage hovering about 28 million litres a day. Official documents further show that 30 million litres a day are lost because of leaks, waste or theft, which comes down to Tk 98.7 million a year in monetary terms. Both officials and experts, however, say that non-revenue water loss beyond 10 per cent is unacceptable.
The agency鈥檚 chief engineer seeks to say that the main reasons for the non-revenue water loss are faults in the supply lines and illegal connections that government and non-government entities and individuals use, noting that the agency could not identify the entities and individuals who use the connections illegally and the volume of water that reach illegal consumers. The agency again seeks to put down the failure to the absence of a meter system. But it gives a picture of how much infested the agency was with corruption that the situation has reached such a pass. The chief revenue officer of the agency which has 50,189 legal consumers, however, says that the agency has primarily identified 1,800 illegal connections. The revenue officer also notes that the number of illegal connections could be rising as illegal connections are freshly identified every day. But the agency has written to the illegal consumers asking them to legalise the connections rather than taking action against them on its own. Whilst the agency should identify the illegal connections and take legal action against the illegal consumers, instead of asking them to legalise their connections, the agency, as its managing director says, is taking recourse to a lengthy, expensive process of conducting a survey with district metered areas in the field to reduce non-revenue water loss. The agency has already sought funds for the introduction of the system. The agency can well go for the district metered areas, but it should sever illegal connections in the short run.
If the agency could attend to the non-revenue water tariff loss effectively, it would not need to increase the tariff to make up for the gap between the cost it needs to produce water and the price it sells water for.