Over 550 water meters have allegedly been stolen from houses in Patuli and Kasba where they had been installed as part of a water loss management project by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC).
The subject of such large-scale alleged theft came to the fore on Saturday when a caller to the weekly phone-in programme Talk to Mayor told mayor Firhad Hakim that water meters were being stolen from houses.
A surprised Hakim asked engineers, who were also present in the room, whether it was true. A senior engineer told Hakim that the theft had been noticed and multiple police complaints (general diary) had also been filed.
Hakim then wondered aloud how the water loss management project would succeed if so many meters were stolen. He told engineers that he wanted to visit the places where the meters were being stolen. He also advised them to think about ways to stop the theft.
A source in the CMC said the project was now underway in wards 101, 102, 107 and
110, which largely cover Kasba and Patuli. Over 8,000 water meters have been installed so far and 585 have been stolen already.
The average cost of each meter is around Rs 2,200, which means water meters worth about Rs 1,2,87,000 have been stolen.
“How will the project go ahead if so many water meters are stolen? Please think about ways to stop the theft of water meters,” Hakim said during the programme.
The water loss management project is an attempt to prevent the wastage of water by measuring the consumption in each household and then advocating the judicious use of water for people found wasting large quantities of potable water.
The meters are attached to pipes that carry potable water into houses from the main water lines of the CMC. An engineer said meters measure how many litres of potable water enter the household.
As part of the project, the CMC collects data on the number of persons living in that household. The national consumption limit per person per day is 135 litres. The CMC can easily arrive at how much water should be required in that household.
“The meter will give us an idea if more than the required water was being used in a household. We will then check where the extra water is going, if there is a leak or if water is overflowing from the reservoir every day,” said the engineer.
A CMC official said the civic body produces 515 million gallons of potable water every day. This should be enough for Calcutta, but there is abundant wastage of water, said the official. Yet there are complaints of water scarcity from multiple pockets in the city. The CMC wants to bring equity in potable water supply across the city, said the official.
Hakim said on Saturday the project did not mean that the CMC wanted to charge or tax people for providing them with potable water.
The CMC had earlier installed over 18,500 meters in Cossipore. Officials said very few meters were stolen when the project was implemented in wards 1 to 6 in north Calcutta. In some households in these areas, water consumption was found to be as high as 600 litres per person per day.