01 Aug 2023

Letlhakane Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) service centre is owed over P16 million with domestic debt leading with over P7 million as at July 24, the corporation’s customer accounts manager, Mr Daniel Kgosietsile said this during Rakops stakeholder engagement recently.

He said domestic debt was followed by government departments with over P5 million and council owing P2 million while the rest of businesses were owed P600 000.

He said measures employed to manage debt included a payment plan which was a negotiated payment arrangement in instalments as per agreed between the customer and WUC. 

He said there was also an upfront payment plan which should be 75 per cent paid up in three months.

Mr Kgosietsile indicated that disconnections were also done to restrict flow of water supply. 

Other mitigations employed to address the situation he said were customer education, stakeholder engagement and Know Your Customer campaigns.

He said once all had been tried the defaulters would be forwarded to debt collectors to assist in collections. 

He said some of the challenges they faced were inability to contact customer due to lack of or incorrect customer details. 

He said other challenges included failure to pay monthly bills, unmonitored institutional house and lack of commitment by debtors. Cluster manager Mr Michael Sepepe said Rakops cluster made up of nine villages in Boteti West included Xhumo, Mmadikola, Xere, Rakops, Motopi, Sekgophane, Moremaoto, Khumaga and Toromoja were supplied from underground sources.

Additionally, he said there were   other challenges such as inadequate underground water, poor water quality, and vandalism by wild animals and perpetual power outages. 

To intervene he said they bowsed to augment supply, drilled boreholes, deployed water supply rationing, and restrictions.

As a long term address to acute shortage of water nationwide, Mr Sepepe stated that other water security projects had been funded through National Development Plan (NDP) 11. 

Such projects he said included Chobe/Zambezi Supply Scheme, Lesotho Highlands Water Supply Scheme, Swakopmund Sea Water Desalination project, waste water reclamation project, and other World Bank funded projects.  Ends