PANJIM: The Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Nilesh Cabral on Thursday said that the assistant engineers (AEs) and junior engineers (JEs) would be held accountable if they fail to take action against the defaulting water supply consumers in time-bound manner, from June onwards.
The department has granted final extension to the water supply bill defaulters to avail the One Time Settlement (OTS) Scheme till March 16.
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Addressing mediapersons, Cabral said that this is the final extension granted to the scheme after which action in form of disconnections would be initiated against the consumers, who fail to pay their regular monthly bills.
“The action would be initiated after the consumer found defaulting for the successive two months. The AEs, JEs are directed to take action in time bound manner,” he said.
Cabral said that those AEs or JEs fail to act, their performance would be marked in negative in the annual confidential report, which is used to grant promotions or to increase pay scale.
“No more promotions and rise in pay scale would be allowed in case of failure to act,” he said.
The PWD Minister said that if over three lakh consumers can pay their bills regularly, why not everyone.
The OTS Scheme was introduced in December 2020, and since then the government has granted several extension to over 52,521 defaulting consumers to pay their pending dues. The total outstanding dues were around Rs 130 crore including Rs 42 crore towards the delayed payment charges.
Until now, 21,843 consumers have settled their payment without opting for OTS Scheme while another 7296 took benefit of OTS.
“So far 54 per cent consumers have cleared their bills,” the Minister said adding that through OTS, the department has recovered Rs 11 crore while delayed payment charges waiver is to the tune of Rs 12 crore.
