Nearly 10 lakh IT-enabled water meters to be installed in the city.
‘Water, water everywhere’… goes the original poem. However, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has modified it a bit for its new mantra —‘Water meter, water meter everywhere’! The AMC has recently decided to make it compulsory for every household to install water meters. Not just this, Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) or IT-enabled meters will be installed in every household for measuring water consumption.
During a recently held meeting with AMC engineers, the municipal commissioner decided to finalise on IT-enabled water meters for every household. Two types of meters were discussed during the meet – those requiring manual reading and those with automatic reading technology.
Explaining why the civic body chose to install automatic reading meters, municipal commissioner Guruprasad Mohapatra said, “Manual meters can be tampered with to show lesser reading. So in order to ensure foolproof reading, we decided to install automatic reading meters.” These AMRs will cost around Rs2,000-2,500 per unit and the cost will be borne by individual families.”
With such meters in place, there will be no need any person to physically visit each area and collect meter readings. “The readings will be displayed on a computer screen at a designated office and the tariffs can be determined accordingly. These AMRs cannot be tampered with and the reading will be stored automatically at one single pre-determined place,” added Mohapatra.
Once the civic body decides to make it mandatory for all households, nearly 10 lakh such units will be required for the city, just like with the electricity meters. As per the AMC guidelines, it is presently mandatory for all new constructions to install water meters in order to obtain the Building Usage (BU) permission.
“Initially, these AMRs will be installed in some households as part of a pilot project. After the pilot project, these meters will be made mandatory for all households,” added one of the engineers of the water department.
Talking about the present status of the project, the engineer said, “Tenders for 10 lakh units have been floated and the price bid has been opened for the same. It is in the approval stage.”
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