Staff Reporter :
Water tariff for residential and commercial use in Dhaka has gone up once again.
Consumers will have to pay Tk15.18 for each unit (1,000 litre) of water for residential use, instead of Tk14.46.
For commercial use, Wasa hiked the price per unit to Tk42 from Tk40.65.
The new tariffs will come into effect from July 1.
The new prices were cleared on Monday during a Wasa board meeting, which its Managing Director Taqsem A Khan joined through video conferencing from the US.
Dhaka Wasa hiked water prices by about 24.97% last year. Therefore, it had been assumed that the price would not be hiked this year as the Covid-19 pandemic had severely hampered livelihoods.
Wasa, however, describes the 5% hike as an “adjustment.”
“We call it price adjustment, not price increase. Our cost of producing water increases every year. According to the law, there is an opportunity to adjust the cost,” its Chairman Engineer Golam Mostafa told Bangla Tribune.
The online newspaper said it failed to reach Managing Director Taqsem for a comment despite several attempts.
Since the Awami League assumed office in 2009, the price of water has increased 13 times in the last 13 years.
Meanwhile, people have been complaining about the quality of Dhaka Wasa water for a long time. A study by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) in April last year also raised the issue of consumer dissatisfaction.
The study found that more than one-third of customers were dissatisfied with Dhaka Wasa services due to the supply of low quality water.
