The National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) has operated for more than 49 years without establishing a policy for the timely revision of water tariffs, the National Audit Office (NAO) has found.
According to a recent audit report, water charges have been revised on 17 occasions since 1990 without any formal tariff policy in place. The revisions carried out in 2022 and 2023 placed significant pressure on consumers already reeling from the country’s economic crisis, raising water charges by between 70% and 100% compared with the rates that applied in 2012.
The board attributed the increases to higher bank interest rates, electricity and fuel costs, rising raw-material prices and the depreciation of the rupee. But the audit also blamed a series of management shortcomings for the utility’s financial difficulties, including higher manpower costs, delays in completing projects, lost revenue, multiple non-revenue-water projects and hold-ups in schemes meant to cut energy costs.
Several projects funded through foreign loans had failed to meet their targets because of delays, the report said. It found that 106 sub-projects under the board’s “Water for All” programme had made only limited progress, leaving the NWSDB unable to provide the 1,316,542 water connections it had planned to deliver by 2024 — a shortfall the auditors said had hurt consumers and cost the board potential revenue.
