Kochi Corporation will survey and geotag 5,445 public water taps after the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) sought payment of around Rs 1 crore a month for their use, prompting the local body to identify functional taps, disconnect nonfunctional connections and check alleged misuse by private shops and vendors.
The corporation does not currently have clear information on which taps on the KWA list are operational or who is using the water. Officials have therefore been instructed to conduct a survey and prepare a record of functional public taps. Mayor V K Minimol said the corporation would also undertake a joint survey with the KWA.
The move follows a demand from the water authority for payment of bills covering the past nine months. The corporation is already facing pressure on its finances and has said that the liability could affect its ability to fund development projects and welfare schemes.
Vyttila councillor V P Chandran said the monthly bill was around Rs 1 crore and argued that the number of public taps needed in the city had reduced because many residents had received household water connections through projects such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, or AMRUT. He said a joint survey had been discussed by the corporation and the KWA several years ago but had not resolved the uncertainty over functional taps.
According to Chandran, identifying the taps would also help determine whether water was being diverted or misused. The corporation intends to disconnect taps that are found to be nonfunctional, while connections being used improperly could also be disbanded, based on the survey findings.
KWA officials said the corporation had not yet brought the issue to their notice but added that the authority was ready to cooperate with the local body. The KWA’s list currently contains 5,445 public water taps across Kochi, although the corporation has not independently established how many are in use.
The billing method is another point of disagreement. Corporation UDF parliamentary party secretary M G Aristotle said the KWA was not calculating charges according to the quantity of water supplied through each public tap. Instead, he said, the authority had fixed a rate for every tap. Aristotle argued that bills could fall substantially once functional taps were identified and charges were linked to actual water supplied.
The financial dispute follows the KWA’s decision in November 2025 to write off Rs 167 crore owed by the corporation for public-tap bills accumulated since 2011. The latest demand has reopened questions about how public water infrastructure is recorded, monitored and paid for between the municipal corporation and the water authority.
The next step is a corporation survey, followed by a proposed joint exercise with the KWA to verify the status of the taps and determine which connections should remain operational.
