Panaji: A proposal is under state govt’s consideration to replace all manual water meters of consumers in the state with smart water meters, using a PPP model, drinking water minister Subhash Phal Dessai told TOI. He said that state loses nearly Rs 50 crore a year due to water thefts and faulty meters, which is a loss govt wants plugged.The drinking water minister said that installing smart meters will not lead to any additional burden on the consumers, as state govt plans to allow an appointed agency to recover cost of the meter installations through the water bills over a period of 10 years or so.“We will not require meter readers if we install smart meters, we will save additional cost spent here too. Also, there are human errors during meter reading which will be eliminated by smart meters. There are presently disputes on bills due to the meter reading being challenged by the consumer. This leads to non-payment of bills. This issue will also be resolved with smart meters,” Phal Dessai said.He said that state is willing to pay the appointed agency around Rs 50 crore to help overcome at least some of the investment cost initially involved in installing the smart meters.Goa’s non-revenue water (water which is treated for supply but does not bring revenue) stands at 40%.“This is high due to leakages in pipelines and faulty meters etc. We can bring down this non-revenue water by replacing the meters with smart meters. We spent Rs 25 per unit to treat raw water for drinking supply. But we supply it to the consumers at the subsidised rate of Rs 4.10 per unit. So when we lose revenue of non-revenue water it is not Rs 4 per unit but we lose Rs 25 per unit,” said the minister.He said installing smart meters is a step towards achieving 24X7 water supply for Goa.Phal Dessai said it will also allow the state to set up a real-time water supply monitoring system, where even the consumer will be able to link the smart meter to their phones to know their consumption of water.
