Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority has raised water tariff by 5 percent with effect from July 1. With the increase, the new water tariff for residential consumers will be Tk 7.34 for 1,000 litres of water (1 unit) gainst Tk 6.99 previously. However, for the commercial consumers the new rate will be Tk 24.44 for 1,000 litres instead of Tk 23.24, according to the authority. “As per Article-22 of the WASA Act 1996, the WASA board has the authority to raise the tariff by five percent every year. However, the board endorsed the adjustment in its last meeting, ” Taqsem A Khan, managing director of WASA told The Independent.
He said the WASA consumers of Dhaka and Narayanganj would get the water bills as per the new tariff for next month. “We are now producing around 2.42 billion litres of water against the daily demand for 2.25 billion litres. Currently, about 2.1 billion litres of water are supplied from 645 deep tubewells, which is 90 percent of the total production. However, we need to harness more water from surface sources, which requires big investment,” Taqsem said. An amount of about Tk 10,500 crore is needed to set up five more water treatment plants and that will increase the production cost, WASA chief said. But unfortunately, the authority has no immediate plan to increase sewerage coverage. “We are covering only 30 per cent of capital city in terms of sewerage coverage.
There is no immediate plan for expansion of the sewerage system. However, we are working on the Dhaka City Master Plan,” the WASA MD said. Wasa is planning to increase the consumption of surface water from 13 to 70 percent by next 10 years, he added.
According to the WASA authority, the system loss of the organisation stands at 29 percent. However, a study said slum dwellers constitute 30 percent of the city’s residents. The number of consumers of WASA is around 3, 14,041.
-With The Independent input
