Flat owners cry over BWSSB’s new levy

Flat owners cry over BWSSB’s new levy
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The flat owners are up in arms against the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board for the ‘‘irrational levy’’ imposed on them.

The Board collects Rs 50 per month from houses that have a borewell. Even if a group of houses or an apartment uses a single borewell, an equal amount is levied from each flat owner. The Belvadi Apartment Flat Owners Association in Malleswaram has come out openly against the system and have represented to the Board to withdraw the levy.

With 18 residential units in the apartment the Board gets Rs 900 per month instead of Rs 50, the residents complain. ‘‘This is 18 times more than the cess collected before the new rule came into force from March,’’ says B.S. Srikantaiah, president of the Belvadi Apartment Flat Owners Association.

‘‘This is just not on. The Board seems to believe each of us use one borewell,’’ he adds.

The Board on an average supplies 1.5 lakh litres of water monthly to the building. An almost equal amount of sewage is drained from the building by the Board, for which Rs 15 is charged per flat, another resident said.

As per the standard requirement a person consumes 150 litres of water each day, which amounts to at least Rs 7,500 litres for the entire building. On an average the apartment, according to the association members requires at least 2.5 lakh litres of water each month. ‘‘We draw water from the borewell only to cover the deficit,’’ they say.

Board Chairman S.K. Pattanayak, however, justified the levy on the grounds that the water drawn from borewells is quite large in quantity.

‘‘It is the whole apartment that comes into picture and not just one flat. The sewerage discharge from the apartment is large and requires a big sanitary pipe,’’ he says.