21 Nov 2021

The North-South Water Carrier (NSWC), is not a mono-directional pipeline, but could provide to the north as well, were the situation between the two geographical areas reverse.

Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Gaselemogwe Senai said this during a media briefing in Gaborone on Thursday, at which the corporation shared its current health status and what it was doing to mitigate challenges.

Mr Senai explained the NSWC was the mainstay of water supply to Greater Gaborone, which he said extended all the way to Kanye, supplying intermediate villages of Thamaga and Moshupa.

With ongoing construction of major pipelines, it will soon be supplying Molepolole and Lobatse as well as villages along the way.

The NSWC also supplies Selebi Phikwe, Palapye, Serowe, Mahalapye and surrounding villages, he said. Mr Senai expressed confidence that the water situation in most of the country’s major remained healthy.

“Total water under storage in our dams currently stands at 962.4MCM representing 87% supply capacity compared to 718.5MCM or 65% capacity in 2020,” he said. He said abundant rainfall at the beginning of this year, resulted in increased water levels.

As more rains were been predicted for year, the corporation remained hopeful that the dam levels would remain very good up to over twelve months.

The CEO also confirmed that Botswana would continue to receive its full allocation from Molatedi dam in line with the TSWASA Agreement, as the dam level was above the allocation threshold.

The Revised TSWASA Water Supply Agreement of 2014 between Botswana and Republic South Africa allows for allocation of water to greater Gaborone between rainy seasons provided the dam levels are above 33 percent.

Mr Senai also assured that various mitigation interventions were being implemented to ensure that customers had access to water.

To that end, the corporation was carrying out rehabilitation of boreholes in villages with acute water supply challenges to improve water supply.

However, he expressed concern over nonpayment of water bills, especially by domestic customers, some of who had not paid their bills in years and whose water metres were inaccessible to WUC metre readers.

“The corporation has been negatively affected as it incurred a debt of P1.3 billion, due to nonpayment of bills and high levels of non-revenue water due to among others authorised unbilled water consumption through bowsing,” he said.

Mr Senai said the corporation had started discussions on the need to manage water accounts and shall continue to build on the same theme until water users took responsibility to manage the resource in homes and industries. “Since the debt level rose, we decided to also engage debt collectors to collect outstanding debt,” he said.

As previous efforts by the corporation to engage debt collectors bore no fruit as it incurred a lot of expenses in associated costs, it would this time around direct all costs owing customers, he said.

He encouraged customers to use self-service platforms such as *186#, WUC website (www.wuc.bw) banks, Orange Money and others to pay as well as to avoid queues in the wake of COVID-19. He said while COVID-19 wreaked havoc the corporation did its best to implement requisite responses, both in its policies and operations, realising windows of opportunity through the challenges. ENDS