THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Ghosts are haunting the Kerala Water Authority (KWA). The reference is to the hundreds of unidentified and non-existing consumers who have been listed in the KWA billing software with water charges/arrears pending against their name. As per the information obtained by this paper on such connections in the Thiruvananthapuram PH Division of the KWA, the number stands at over 4,000! The interesting fact is that the KWA is not sure whether those connections are there at all! This paper had sought information under the Right to Information Act regarding unidentified consumers in the four sub-divisions of the PH Divison, ie East (PTP), North (Kowdiar), South (Kuriathy) and Central (Vellayambalam) during the last five years. Water charges running into thousands and lakhs of rupees have been billed against many consumers and the arrears keep on increasing. “Some of these have been disconnected; some are there due to data entry errors; there are many others which were once special connections but were not deleted even after they were converted to regular connections. Some connections of government and Corporation offices also fall in this list. They used to be individual connections in the beginning and were converted to bulk connections later. But, the individual connections still remain,” a KWA official said.A big headache is the list of those consumers who don’t have a proper address. “Though we had sent letters notifying the arrears, those letters came back,” he added. There are addresses with just the name of the road or the location written against the name of the consumer. “There are cases where the connections have been disconnected because they don’t get KWA water. But, that information has not been entered in our system. In some cases, the building itself has been demolished, but the connection is still there.”Among the four sub-divisions, the Kuriathi sub-division, with Kuriathi and Vandithadam under it, has the longest list of unidentified/disconnected consumers, with Kuriathi alone accounting for 1,263. And the section has over 310 consumers with arrears of Rs 10,000 and above! These connections are in East Fort and nearby areas.In the PTP sub-division, which has PTP and Karamana sections under it, there are 265 and 287 such consumers respectively. In the PTP section, there are over 95 consumers who have arrears of Rs 10,000 and above pending. The largest amount is listed against a consumer at Maruthankuzhy - Rs 5,36,882. In the Karamana section, the maximum amount is Rs 6,07,890 of a consumer in Karamana. Coming to the Kowdiar sub-division, which has Kowdiar and Pongummoodu sections under it, there are 530 and 563 unidentified consumers respectively. In the Kowdiar section, the arrears start from Rs 22 and go up to Rs 3,22,928. In the Pongummoodu section, we came across many names with just ‘XXX’ marked against them, instead of full address or the TC number. “Some names entered in the ledger during the 1980s didn’t have full details. Later on, these names were transferred to the computer and since the information was incomplete, those spaces were marked XXX,” an official pointed out.The Central sub-division with Palayam and Pattoor sections under it has 654 and 227 such consumers, as on May 2003. In the Palayam section, there are many consumers with incomplete addresses, some have just TC written against the consumer’s name; some 165 such names are there. The section also has consumers with just serial numbers written against the connection. A few of them are listed against the office of the Commissioner of Police. It is not clear whether these connections exist now! The situation is no different in the Pattoor section.
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