Kochi Corporation will survey and geotag functional public water taps across the city after the Kerala Water Authority demanded around Rs 1 crore a month in payments, raising concerns over unverified connections, possible misuse and the municipal burden of maintaining taps that may no longer be needed.
According to the list held by KWA, Kochi has 5,445 public water taps. The corporation, however, does not have clear information on how many remain functional or who is using them. Officials and elected representatives have alleged that some connections may be used by private shops and vendors rather than for public access.
The corporation has decided to identify the taps, geotag those that are functional and disconnect connections considered non-functional. Mayor V K Minimol said officials had been instructed to conduct the survey and that a joint exercise with KWA would also be undertaken.
The move comes as KWA has sought payment for water supplied through public taps over the past nine months. The monthly bill is estimated at around Rs 1 crore. Vyttila councillor V P Chandran said the corporation was already facing difficulty in funding development projects and welfare schemes.
Chandran said the need for many public taps had reduced because residents had received household water connections through projects such as Amrut. He added that the corporation and KWA had decided several years ago to conduct a joint survey to establish the number of functional taps in the city, but the status of that exercise was not provided in the report.
The dispute also highlights a billing problem. Corporation UDF parliamentary party secretary M G Aristotle said KWA was not calculating charges according to the volume of water supplied through each public tap. Instead, he said, a fixed rate had been applied to every tap. Once functional taps are identified, he argued, KWA should calculate bills based on the quantity of water supplied, which could reduce the amount payable by the corporation.
KWA officials said the corporation had not brought the issue to their notice so far, but that the authority was ready to cooperate with the local body in conducting the survey. The outcome will determine which of the 5,445 listed connections are still operational, which serve a continuing public purpose and which may require disconnection.
The current demand follows a major earlier adjustment in the two agencies’ long-running account. In November 2025, KWA wrote off Rs 167 crore owed by the corporation for public water tap bills accumulated since 2011. The latest demand indicates that the question of responsibility for public water consumption remains unresolved despite that write-off.
The joint survey and the proposed geotagging exercise are now the next official steps. They are expected to provide both agencies with a verified inventory of public taps before decisions are taken on disconnections and future billing.
