Ashok Reddy orders HMWSSB to recover long-pending dues
HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) managing director K. Ashok Reddy has directed officials to complete 100% billing, recover long-pending dues and resolve billing disputes.
He held a review meeting on revenue performance with executive directors, directors and other senior officials on Thursday along with Joint Managing Director Mayank Mittal.
Water Board targets high-priority defaulters
Officials reviewed unbilled and unpaid CANs, demand and collections across zones, circles and divisions through a revenue dashboard.
Ashok Reddy expressed dissatisfaction over water supply continuing to some connections despite dues pending for years. He directed officials to inspect such CANs in the field, resolve meter, billing or other issues and recover the outstanding amounts.
He said indiscriminate disconnection of connections merely because dues were pending was not the right solution. Excessive disconnections could increase disputes and eventually affect revenue recovery, he said.
Officials should identify the consumer’s problem, resolve it and focus on recovering the amount due, he added.
For long-pending dues, officials should intervene directly. General managers should personally contact consumers where dues have been pending for more than five years, deputy general managers where they have been pending for more than one year, and the respective managers where dues have been pending for more than six months.
Billing, meter and other disputes should be resolved and steps taken to recover the outstanding amounts, he said.
Managers to handle 10 high-priority CANs each
Officials were directed to identify high-priority defaulters and assign 10 CANs to each manager. After resolving those cases, another 10 CANs should be assigned to the manager.
Ashok Reddy said progress would be reviewed after three days. He also directed officials to prepare lists of the top 10 and top 100 defaulters, share them with field staff and ensure regular follow-up.
For pending disputes involving bulk connections, absence of meters, old bills and other issues, he suggested setting up committees of four to five officials at the circle level.
The committees should meet once a week and examine at least 10 to 15 disputes for resolution. Clear guidelines should be prepared for this process, he said.
Officials were also asked to study variations in docket average billing for 15 days and prepare an analytical report.
Revenue reviews should not be limited to billing and collections, Ashok Reddy said. Water supply, progress of works, service complaints and revenue should also be reviewed comprehensively.
He directed officials at every level to have clearly defined responsibilities and monitor daily performance based on data to achieve significant progress in billing, dispute resolution and recovery of dues.
AI dashboard to strengthen revenue recovery
Joint Managing Director Mayank Mittal said the revenue dashboard being developed using artificial intelligence (AI) would help identify billing, dues, collections, disputes and high-priority CANs quickly.
The dashboard would analyse information from the zone level down to individual CANs and identify where billing was pending, where collections were low and which connections required special attention.
This would help officials set targets and recover dues more efficiently, he said. The AI-based revenue dashboard would be made available in the coming days, Mittal added.
Regional directors Pankaja, Samrat Ashok and Santosh, operations directors Narayana, Vasa Satyanarayana and Prabhu, revenue director Kiran Kumar, chief general managers, general managers and officials from the revenue and IT departments attended the meeting.
