Society managements have taken on the responsibility of collecting signatures from residents, with a target of 1,00,000 signatures from across the sub-city.
The Federation of Cooperative Group Housing Societies has started a signature campaign to protest against the penalties levied by Delhi Jal Board (DJB) on rainwater harvesting systems and sewerage charges. It aims to put pressure on DJB to give societies some relief from these charges. Residents say the DJB water bills are arbitrary and sent even to those societies that have their rainwater harvesting systems in good condition and are not liable to pay penalties. They also allege that sewerage charges are levied on societies that don’t use borewells and hence should not be paying the charges.
V Selvarajan, secretary of Federation of CGHS, Dwarka, said, “We have kept a target of 1,00,000 signatures from societies across Dwarka. This joint representation will be submitted to the LG soon.”
Society managements have taken on the responsibility of collecting signatures from residents — and many of them have already started.
President of Katyayani Apartments in Sector 6, JB Singh, said, “We plan to collect all signatures by January 7. We want some relief in our water bills, as we have not been using borewell and our rainwater harvesting system is also in good condition.”
Many other societies have also expressed similar concerns.
KS Bhati, president of both Federation of RWAs of Sector 9 and Ganpati Apartments, said, “I support the signature campaign but understand that this is only a symbolic protest and may not get us the results we want. But DJB has sent arbitrary bills and our collective voice should go up against it. It should have given us prior information and sent bills with penalties only to those societies that deserve them, not to all. I would want people to also think of a legal way to deal with the issue.”
Residents and RWAs are also trying to get the Delhi government’s attention. President of the Vinayak Apartments RWA in Sector 10, Rakesh Klasi, said, “The Delhi government should give some relief to CGHSs on rainwater harvesting system penalties, and at the same time create a team to check the condition of these pits in societies and give them proper guidelines on how to maintain them, even engineers to build them where necessary. As rainwater harvesting systems are the need of the hour, the public and the government should work hand in hand to bring about a positive change.”
