Bhubaneswar, April 4: Residents will shortly receive their monthly water bills at their doorsteps with the public health engineering organisation set to tie up with India Post.

The organisation has been suffering losses because of staff crunch.

"We were unable to distribute and collect water bills from households that resulted in huge revenue loss. The present plan of roping in the postal department for the bill distribution and payment collection would make the system easy and transparent," said an official. Postmen will now distribute water bills to households. Later, the residents will have the options of paying the amount at the organisation's cash counters, post offices or online.

"An agreement will be signed between the organisation and India Post within a few days, after which the system will come into place in Bhubaneswar. The move will help the organisation generate more revenue," said housing and urban development's special secretary Sisir Ratho.

At present, there are over 69,000 registered pipe water consumers in the city. Residents pay their bills at the organisation's 17 cash collection counters. With the participation of India Post, the number of collection centres will increase to 89 in Bhubaneswar.

"It is a good move by the government to distribute water bills through postal service. The engineering organisation has been very irregular in sending us the bills. If we do not get the bills, how do we pay?" said Kharavela Nagar resident Rabinarayan Nanda.

Sources in the Post Master General's office said there existed 72 small and big post offices in the city with more than 220 postmen attached to them. The postmen deliver nearly 20,000 official and personal letters, bills and other material on a daily basis.

"This is an online world, and the number of letters has drastically come down as compared to earlier years. However, I still distribute more than a hundred letters, bills and parcels on a daily basis. I hope the tie-up with the engineering body is successful," said Nityananda Mahakud, a postman.

Ratho told The Telegraph that the government would provide an annual amount of Rs 2.15 crore to the postal department to implement the scheme. "The organisation will generate the bills and hand them over to India Post. The postal department will collect the money and hand it back to the government," said Ratho.

An analysis by the state government about the loss in the tax collection revealed that from 2012 to 2015, the organisation had targeted to collect Rs 25.73 crore from the households. However, it actually collected only around Rs 22.22 crore, around 80 per cent of the target. Now, the officials aim to raise the actual collection to about 95 per cent in partnership with the postal department.