Chittagong Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (CWASA) yesterday held a meeting with the consumers at the conference room at the CWASA.
As many as 250 consumers from different areas of the city raised their grievances attending the meeting.
The consumers of Halishahar, Agrabad and Patenga areas of the city complained that they were facing acute water crisis with the onset of the heat that comes with summer.
“Our miseries know no bound. Despite paying off my bill of water regularly, I do not get water sufficiently. As a result, we have to buy bottled water. The water supplied by the CWASA is salty,” complained Abu Taher, a resident of Steel Mill area.
“The CWASA authorities should beef up its monitoring so that we could get our service,” added Taher.  
Another consumer complained that he did not get water bill on time.
While addressing as the chief guest at the meeting, CWASA Managing Director Engr AKM Fazlullah said “the city dwellers were going to get rid of the water crisis soon after completion of a number of mega projects”.
“CWASA can now supply only 210 million liter of water daily (which is only 42per cent of the total demand) against the daily demand of 500 million liter of water. We have already undertaken some big projects at a cost of Tk 8000 crore to bridge the huge deficit between supply and demand. We hope to mitigate the water crisis if all of these three projects are successfully implemented,” said the Managing Director of CWASA.
“I admit that there are some anomalies regarding voucher in the CWASA. However, we have been able to reduce it. We have suspended 11 CWASA men on charge of their involvement with graft,” added Fazlullah.
“The city dwellers should be conservative with the use of water. It is our moral responsibility not to waste water,” Fazlullah said.
“The complaints against the CWASA officials and employees have remarkably come down due to some changes to the management. The objective of holding such consumer meeting is to turn the CWSA into a consumer-oriented organisation,” said Md Abdul Awal, Deputy Managing Director (Admin).
While speaking as the chair of the meeting, Md Golam Mawla, Deputy Managing Director (Finance) said that they try their level best to address the complaints of the consumers.
“We appreciate your complaint which will help ensure transparency for providing better service. Please register your grievances in black and white so that we could take immediate steps,” Mawla urged.   
The meeting was attended by the high-ranking CWASA officials including Shamshuddoha, secretary, Zahangir Alam Chowdhury, Deputy Secretary and Md Nazim Uddin, Assistant Secretary.
Later, a total of 50 consumers were presented crests for paying water bill on regular basis.