11 Oct 2018

Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) in Molepolole is owed over P49 million in water bills.

This came to the fore in an interview with WUC general manager, Ms Boitumelo Kgaodi recently.

She said the district council owed WUC P575 366, government P29 million, businesses P1 million while domestic customers owed P18 million.

However, she said the corporation was intensifying collection by doing announcements and disconnecting those who were lagging behind on payments.

Ms Kgaodi said they had engaged their legal service to help them reclaim what they were owed and they had also sourced help from ITC for credit black listing.

She said said the water infrastructure and the process of purifying water was expensive therefore they needed the money to help in that regard.

Furthermore, she said Batswana used to complain about the P20 standard charge but it was revoked in 2017 yet they were still failing to pay, adding that if people did not pay, WUC would be forced to disconnect taps.

Ms Kgaodi said when they carried out massive disconnections, they extended hours of operations to make it easy for those who wanted to pay. She added that they also make announcements and opened offices on Saturdays.

To ease the pressure at their office, the corporation advised customers to pay at the nearest post offices, Online or download their app and use it to pay, but they needed to know their customer and contract number.

Furthermore, Ms Kgaodi said WUC was looking at introducing prepaid water systems and had already advertised for expression of interest.

She said the project would be rolled out in remote areas before going to urban areas.

She acknowledged that some of the domestic bills were unreasonably high and they were still looking in to what might be the contributing factor.

However, the general manager said plans were underway to remedy the water situation in the village, citing that the targeted date for bringing water to Thamaga via the North-South water carrier (NSC)  was July this year but had been extended to August next year.

She explained that if Thamaga could get water from the NSC, it would mean the pressure would reduce hence Molepolole might get better water flow.
In addition, she said plans were afoot to connect six water boreholes at Malwelwe Wellfield so that the water flow could improve in Molepolole.

She said they sourced funding from the World Bank and were expecting the project to take off anytime and be completed by the end of 2019.

Ms Kgaodi also said most water in Molepolole was lost through leakage since the water network was old and pipes were dilapidated.

She said they were expecting to expand the water supply network and that project was expected to be completed in 2022.

Moreover, Molepolole is expected to be connected to the NSC from Gamononyane and the project was still to take off, but is expected to be complete in 2020.

She also said they had a plant called Gaotlhobogwe treatment which softened lime.

She said the aim was to make the water safe to drink although at the moment it was not palatable. Ends