Cuttack, April 23: The Public Health Engineering Organisation (Pheo) has started the process to install water meters in households to keep tabs on the usage.
The frequency-based automatic meter will collect consumption data and transfer it to a central database, where the usage bill would be drawn up. Pheo plans to complete the installation process within three months.
"The meters will help us track the amount of water consumed by each household. Besides, it will allow our officials to take readings using handheld devices just like we do it in the case of electricity," Pheo (Cuttack division) executive engineer Sushant Ghadei told The Telegraph today.
The state, in 2013, had decided to install water meters in urban local bodies where pipe water was supplied. The meters will be tamper-proof. Pheo has already invited tenders from interested parties.
"Installation of the automatic meter reading devices in the city will be done at an estimated cost of Rs 37 crore. We will not charge the consumers for it," Ghadei said.
In Cuttack, Pheo supplies pipe water to around 60,000 connections - residential, commercial and institutional. There are also around 15,000 illegal connections. The process to detect and convert these illegal connections into regular connections is also going on.
An official said there was demand for 101 million litres of water a day, while the Pheo supplied 102.9 million litres each day.
He said the problem of shortage surfaced only because there was no control mechanism to check excess usage. Besides, there is an estimated 20 per cent wastage owing to leakage of pipes and another 10 per cent because of a lack of awareness.
Bidanasi resident Satyajit Roy said: "Fixing water meters will check wastage of water as a large number of people waste water."
Pheo officials said they would begin a door-to-door campaign to spread awareness on the wastage of water.
"As for the issue of leakage, replacement of old pipelines is under way and nearly 60 per cent of them have been replaced," Ghadei said.
At present, pipe water is supplied in 44 of the 59 wards of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation. The remaining 13 wards under its jurisdiction are partially covered, while there is no pipe water supply in the other two.<>
Mercury soars
Temperatures continued to hover above 40°C at 11 places in the state, throwing daily life out of gear.
Balangir and Titlagarh were the hottest places in the state on Sunday with a maximum temperature of 44.8°C.
Officials of the Regional Meteorological Centre here predicted the heatwave condition to intensify further in the coming days.
However, weathermen also predicted rain and thundershowers at one or two places over north Odisha and the districts of Khurda, Nayagarh and Puri within the next 24 hours.
