Bhubaneswar, March 21: Domestic consumers will have to pay Rs 3.94 for every thousand litres of water as the public health engineering organisation is gearing up to install water meters at nearly 72,000 households across the city.

The organisation intends to commission the project in households at Unit-I, Unit-III, Unit-IV, Unit-IX, Old Town, Saheed Nagar, Rental Colony at Nayapalli, Chandraskeharpur and Ghatikia by February next year.

Commercial establishments in the designated areas will have to cough up Rs 13.03 for every thousand litres of water.

While the engineering body is going to spend Rs 86.86 crore to commission the project under the recently-launched Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut), the collected revenue will be utilised to improve water supply in the localities.

Earlier, the organisation used to calculate the bill according to the number of taps installed in each household. At that time, the average bill of a household used to be Rs 70 a month.

"The modalities to install water meters in the households are under process. In the first phase, the meters would be installed in the households of all the registered consumers. At present, there are nearly 72,000 registered consumers with the engineering organisation in the city," said superintending engineer Chitta Ranjan Jena.

Jena said the present plan would help the government curb the loss of non-revenue water. "We are yet to calculate how much revenue we could generate after the installation of water meters. However, it would definitely help reduce the amount of non-revenue water," he said.

The organisation has already installed water meters at a few commercial establishments such as Utkal University and other private colleges and institutions.

Sources said only 1 per cent consumers in the city - only commercial establishments - paid water according to their usage.

The water supply data extracted from the engineering body revealed that of the city's around nine lakh population, nearly two lakh people were yet to be connected with the water supply.

The data further revealed that the authorities have covered 34 wards whereas the remaining 33 wards remained partially connected with water supply.

Around two lakh people are deprived of piped water despite the engineering body having excess water.

According to the state government, the city requires 120.62 million litres of water every day whereas the availability is 295.30 million litres, which is more than double the requirement.

The organisation has further calculated that 50 per cent of the water supplied to the consumers fetches no revenue as water gets lost during transition and theft by households and private tankers.

However, even after the loss, the organisation has enough quantity of water to cater to the needs of the residents.

"This is a nice initiative to install water meters in households. The move would generate good revenue for the administration, which can be utilised to improve the water supply network. However, they should ensure smooth supply of water to the households," said Saheed Nagar resident Niladri Behera.