05 Jul 2015

Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) general manager for Maun/Ghanzi, Mr Moitseemang Manthe says the corporation spends over P7.6 million on operation costs on a monthly basis.

On average, Mr Monthe said WUC collects P1.4 million while the operation costs were high.  Currently, he said they were running the corporation at a deficit.

Mr Monthe was briefing councillors about the challenges faced by the corporation and the interventions recently. He said individuals and the business community owe over P3.5 million while some government departments owed about P1.4 million.

He informed the house that they need more funds to operate effectively, noting that water infrastructure remains a challenge for the corporation to supply adequate water in the North West District.

He said most of the plants were inefficient and had past their design life, hence the corporation experiences frequent breakdown of supply infrastructure. 

Mr Monthe also pointed out that vandalism of water infrastructure for livestock water was worrisome and urged the public to desist from the practice.

Some other challenges, he said included poor services such as un-serviced land, billing problems, office space, institutional restructuring and change of management and spaghetti network which makes it difficult to ration water and trace faults.

He said since they took over water services, bills were done manually because villages under Maun Management Centre were currently operating outside the system. 

He said data migration was ongoing and that the exercise was done to transfer all customers’ information from the manual and EDAMS systems to the SAP system.

Mr Monthe revealed that to normalise some of the challenges, the corporation had come up with some intervention such as the ongoing plant improvement project at Makalamabedi which would supply villages of Phuduhudu, Chanoga and Makalamabedi.

He said the P166 million project has two phases; one for underground water while the other phase takes the water from the river. 

He said the tender for the construction of Shakawe Water Treatment Plant project would be floated in October this year.

Mr Monthe also noted that the P137million Seronga/Gudigwa Rural Village Water Supply project had been awarded for construction and was expected to rectify the water shortage and quality to the affected areas.

He said water rationing was also being implemented while water bowsing was in place to augment supply.

He also briefed councillors about the “Saenela Tumalano campaign” which is the signing of the water agreement campaign. 

Mr Monthe said the exercise has been ongoing on all areas where WUC was operating and that the Maun Management Centre was also part of the campaign. “The campaign is meant to try and improve the integrity of customer data in order to promote stakeholder satisfaction.”

In addition, he revealed that since the takeover, customers were still coming forward to sign their water agreements, even though this year, the numbers were dwindling.

Mr Monthe observed that despite the challenges faced, the corporation would continue to supply water to the communities. ENDS