Four years ago the Public Health Engineering Department had initiated the process for the procurement and installing of meters to monitor water consumption in the two cities of Jammu and Srinagar in a phased manner, but the plan has failed to take off till today. The misuse of potable water is a misnomer as far as the State of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned where natural resources are in abundance but hardly any effort has been made to utilise them systematically and scientifically to the optimum use. The initial move was to complete the installation of meters in three phases covering the commercial establishments, including restaurants, hotels, lodges and shops in the first phase followed by metering in civil line areas and the domestic connections in the final phase. The state of the project is that in both the capital cities almost all the households have been provided with piped water but without any metering system. The non-installation of water meters has led to wastage, leakage and misuse of water. It is common to see water overflowing from overhead tanks, people washing streets in front of their houses, irrigating kitchen gardens, watering lawns for hours; washing cars abundantly which further causes shortage to the households at higher elevations. Not only that some of the residents put booster motors on the direct water supply line cutting supply to other households. In the absence of a proper water meter system the wastage of drinking water is in abundance and the scarcity is felt during the peak summer periods when households go without supply for days. Presently, water bills are issued on fixed rate basis per month and if water meters are installed it can provide an effective way to encourage sensible water use. There is no denial of the fact that government too stands to incur heavy loss in the form of the revenue collected through metering system. On an average if the system becomes operational that’s a big achievement when at least water wastage can be checked and use of water can be reduced from 10 to 15 per cent per household which can help in overcome the shortage during the peak summer months.
