RAWALPINDI: The Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) on Tuesday decided to lodge first information reports (FIRs) against residents having illegal water connections, warning them that the connections would be snapped if they fail to legalise them.

It also formed teams to recover outstanding dues from chronic defaultersandsetatargettorecover Rs150 million per month till the end of fiscal year 2023-24.

This was decided in a meeting held with acting Wasa Managing Director Mohammad Saleem Ashraf in the chair. The officials of finance and revenue also attended the meeting.

Mr Ashraf said the revenue branch had achieved the target to recover Rs140 million per month in the firsttwo quarters of the fiscal year but there was a dire need to expedite the recovery from defaulters.

He asked the recovery inspectors to snap water and sewerage connections if habitual defaulters failed to pay the outstanding amount to the civic agency. He said there was no direct funding for the civic agency to run the affairs of water supply while paying electricity bills of more than 470 tubewells in the city area and salaries ofthe staff.

He said Wasa was providing incentives to illegal connection holders to get their water connection legalised by paying dues in the shape of installments and the civic agency would end surcharge on it.

He said the civic agency had completed the survey of the city and had the data of all illegal connections but it was giving time to people to get their connections legalised as it did not want to suspend water supply to them.

`If the illegal connection holder fails to contact the civic agency then it would have no other option but to cut the connection and register cases against the owner,` he added.Mr Ashraf said recoveryof revenue of the water agency would further improve in the coming days and Wasa would meet its target this fiscal year. He said a new strategy had been adopted to recover dues from chronic defaulters.

Apart from this, he said Wasa had also expedited its development work in city areas to ensure supply of water to residents of garrison city.

He said the government had launched the project to bring water from Chahan Dam and in this regard, it had allocated quota of12 million gallons of water (MGD) daily for garrison city.

He said earlier, the Punjab government was to provide 6 MGD for Rawalpindi city but later it decided to enhance it to 12 MGD from Chahan Dam.

He said the Project Management Unit had been established and that the government would launch another project to improve water supply in the garrison city. In this regard, the capacity of water filtration plant in Rawal Dam would be enhanced from 23 MGD to 28 MGD, he added.