DUSHANBE, August 30, Asia-Plus -- The Dushanbe municipal waterworks (Dushanbevodokanal or DVK) now owes 3 million Somonis for electricity to the “Barqi Tojik” power holding, the DVK top manager Azam Tabarov announced at news conference in Dushanbe on August 30.  

According to him, one of the main reason for this is inopportune payment by the public and organizations of Dushanbe for water.  “A total debt of the public and organizations to the Dushanbe municipal waterworks has amounted to 13 million Somonis as of August 30,” Mr. Tabarov said, noting that the public’s debt for water has amounted to 5.5 million Somonis.  

At the same time, the municipal waterworks head noted that lately, the rate of collection of funds for water improved, rising from 15%-17% to more than 40%.  “Thus, water consumers paid 97,108 Somonis of the originally planned 224,000 Somonis last week, which is 43.22 percent,” Azam Tabarov said.

Mr. Tabarov noted that the public last week paid 30,352 Somonis, which is 49.9 percent of the target determined at 60,080 Somonis.   “However, this rate of collection of funds does not allow covering all necessary expenses to provide the city’s residents with drinking water,” the DVK director stressed.   

To tackle the problem of payments the DVK administration has decided to enlist services of heads of “mahalla” (communities), who should persuade residents of their communities to pay for water consumption opportunely.  

The First Deputy Mayor, Masaid Homidov, speaking to journalists noted that at present the Dushanbe municipal waterworks serves 35,501 residential buildings in the city, including 2,618 multi-storey and 35,883 private residential buildings.  

Four pump stations of Dushanbe daily produce 841cubic meters of water.  So far this year, they have produced 306.965 million cubic meters of water.