NAGPUR: In order to improve water supply facility in the city, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) in 2012 decided to hand over water supply management to private company Orange City Waters (OCW) for 25 years. Though OCW has been making efforts to fix loopholes and improve water supply in the city, the NMC is finding it very difficult to recover pending water bill from the people. As per records, around 1.25 lakh customers in Nagpur are receiving water for free, causing a loss of crores of rupees to the NMC.
The city is being supplied 29 lakh MLD of water every month but billing is not being done as per these figures. There are many areas in the city that are yet to get water supply from the Corporation. Whereas some of the areas are getting the water every day for free. OCW is trying to identify such customers and regularize them at the earliest.
The State government has provided Rs 307 crores for execution of the 24×7 water supply scheme. When questions are raised over slow pace of progress of work, the NMC points fingers at the OCW, which says the work is going on and it will be completed soon. The OCW said that it was re-issuing connections and was also changing pipelines to ensure smooth operations in the future.
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Thursday 13 March 2025
Interestingly, this city with a population of over 30 lakh has valid water supply connections with only 3.20 lakh families. There are around 1.51 lakh unauthorized connections, out of which 25,000 connection were regularized. At present, around 1.75 lakh customers owe Rs 935 crores to NMC as pending water bills and Rs 91 crores as interest on it.
