Dabolim residents marched to the Water department Office at Baina regarding the hefty bills despite water scarcity on Monday, December 6.
The villagers are receiving hefty water bills from past few month despite the fact that Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has made an announcement of free water supply to every household in Goa. The aggrieved residents asked the PWD engineer to justify the bills.
There is a lot of water scarcity; in some cases, taps were without water for days, and people had to wait near the tap and stay all night for water; nonetheless, increasing the water bill is fraudulent.
"This time I promise to talk to your superiors and work out a solution in two days", said Naresh Painguinkar, PWD Assistant Engineer.
However, Painguinkar said the new tariff is set and Rs 25 would be charged per unit flat if consumption goes above 50 cubic metres.
He added, "I have seen most of the bills where the consumption is above 50 cubic metres and in that case, a new tariff of Rs 25 per unit is applied. The department has set the tariff of Rs 25 per unit after a lot of study because there cannot be more than 50 cubic metres of consumption for any individual family.”.
Laxman Kavlekar, Former Bogmalo sarpanch, said that the government must give us an immediate solution, failing which we will have to protest on the roads.
As the discussion lasted for over three hours with heated exchanges, the police were summoned to ensure there was no untoward incident and the people offered time till December 10 for the PWD engineer to check into the issue
Residents gave the engineer a five-day deadline or they will gather on the streets.