29 Jan 2020

Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) says it is owed over P16.4 million by its customers in Lobatse.

Speaking at a stakeholders’ engagement forum for Lobatse management centre on Monday, WUC principal commercial services officer Ms Dothodzo Chalashika pointed that most of the debt was by domestic customers.

She said individuals or domestic customers in Lobatse owe the corporation a sum of around P5.9 million. She said businesses or commercial customers on the other hand owe a sum of P5.3 million.

She added that the remainder of the debt was from council and government departments. “We are pleading with leaders to encourage members of the community to pay. We have to recover that money because it is used to run operations of the corporation,” Ms Chalashika said.

The forum was attended by councilors and customary court presidents as well as some councilors of villages within the Lobatse water supply cluster.Ms Chalashika pointed that they had encountered challenges in their effort to recover the debt because they had lost track of some defaulters. She said that happened when some customers changed their address details without informing the corporation. She urged customers to always inform the corporation when they change addresses for ease of communication.

She pointed that they were trying to address the situation by going on periodic house to house visits to collect address details of their customers and update the corporation’s database.

Ms Chalashika further pleaded with customers to facilitate access to premises every month for WUC officers to conduct meter reading.

She where officers were unable to conduct meter reading after failing to gain access to some premises , the corporation ended up resorting to estimating the amount to be paid by the customer.  ENDS