While the twin-city, which has more than 34,500 residential and 3,200 commercial water connections, MBMC’s water supply department has only 27 meter readers on its payroll.

Mumbai: At a time when the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) spends sums running into crores of rupees each year to replace old pipelines and overhauling the existing network to enhance water supply in the twin-city, its metering and billing mechanism continues to remain outdated.

While the twin-city, which has more than 34,500 residential and 3,200 commercial water connections, MBMC’s water supply department has only 27 meter readers on its payroll. It means that one reader is assigned more than 1,000 connections, which have to be monitored every three months.

Hapless consumers are ending up with exorbitant bills due to average readings that the civic administration largely relies upon. The twin-city is still waiting for its full-fledged lab to check faulty meters.

Nearly eight years after  mooting the proposal, it has been cleared, but is yet to take shape. While the faulty meters pump additional cash into civic coffers, the bills are creating problems for consumers.