Whose land is it anyway?: Khalabat Township, Kangra Colony to cough up water bills

Move will undermine sacrifices of those affected by Tarbela Dam construction, says QWP MPA .

HARIPUR:

The Haripur District Council will resume collecting water bills from consumers of Khalabat Township and Kangra Colony this month.

The decision has been taken over six months after the provincial finance department reversed an executive order issued in 2007 by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) government. Under the order, residents of Kangra Colony, Khalabat Township and Tarbela Township, who have been affected by the construction of Tarbela Dam, would be exempted from paying water bills.



Insiders familiar with the matter told The Express Tribune the then chief minister, Akram Durrani, had waived the monthly water charges of Rs150 per consumer on the demands of former minister of transport Akhtar Nawaz Khan. Since then, all water expenses for Khalabat Township and Tarbela Township were being deducted from funds allocated every year to the district council as net hydel profit on Tarbela Dam.

From my land

According to insiders, monthly water bills for over 18,000 consumers amount to Rs2.7 million and the exemption has cost the provincial exchequer Rs32 million annually.

On July 14, the provincial finance secretary announced the cancellation of the order in a letter addressed to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa local government secretary.

In the letter, he insisted all three settlements should bear the expense of electricity and maintenance as all municipal and town committees across the province are bearing the cost of electricity for running tube wells, through water charges.

However, the matter was hushed up until last week when the district council was asked to begin collecting water bills from this month, January.

Haripur Chief Coordination Officer Shehryar Khan said water bills will only be collected from residents of Khalabat Township and Kangra this month. “The consumers will have to repay arrears from July 2014,” he added.

Voice of dissent

However, Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) MPA Gohar Nawaz has led a series of protests against the move over the past week. He has resisted the decision as it undermines the sacrifices rendered by those affected by the construction of Tarbela Dam.

The QWP leader has also threatened to hold a sit-in outside the provincial assembly if the exemption on water bills is cancelled. He vowed to get a rebate on electricity bills for those who have borne the burden of paying water bills for these settlements.

Nawaz has accused his political rivals of raising the matter with the chief minister. He has blamed Akbar Ayub Khan, PTI’s MPA from PK-52, Haripur-IV, for raising the matter to settle personal scores with Gohar who fielded his nephew Babar Nawaz Khan against Akbar in the by-election for PK-50, Haripur-II.

Yousuf Ayub, elder brother of the PTI MPA, has denied the allegations and insists his brother has nothing to do with the resumption of collecting water bills from the people of Khalabat Township and Kangra Colony.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2015.