Water offence in the city

This conjures up an inherently thought-provoking equation. The water requirement in the capital being twice the level of actual supply, if the systems loss to the extent of 49 per cent were substantially reduced, obviously then the deficit would have been to that extent narrowed down.

The systems loss is both in cash and kind. Unmetered water connections are a whopping 61,000 with a huge monetary loss being evidently incurred to the exchequer as water bills cannot be claimed officially. For understandable reasons, the LGRD minister proposes to involve the private sector in installing meters on them. What about penalising those responsible for the clandestine connections, the illegal beneficiaries and the colluding employees? How far the passing of the responsibility of bill collection into the hands of WASA Employees' Welfare Cooperatives will be successful in minimising revenue evasion in zones 4 and 5, one has to wait and see.

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The loss in kind or outright waste of water is taking place via the 90-kilometre dilapidated water supply pipes and through the nozzleless water hydrants that can be seen in the old part of Dhaka in particular.

The above could very well provide the grist to the mill of global water and environment-related concerns. The huge waste of water we are incurring on a daily basis is unforgivable in an increasingly water-starving world. Added to the huge ordeal is the land subsidence threatened by the declining water table in the subterranean caused by extraction of water through large-scale tube-well operations.