10 Sep 2023

Selebi Phikwe Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) is owed over P176m in water bills.

Selebi Phikwe WUC branch general manager, Ms Fenyang Samu has informed stakeholders during WUC stakeholder consultative meeting in the town recently.

He said the domestic, government and businesses made 56, 32 and eight per cent of the debt respectively.

She said the domestic debt totalled P101 million, and urged domestic customers to pay their bills as required.

Ms Samu commended Selebi Phikwe Town Council for always paying water bills on time, adding that the town council had no outstanding balance.

She urged government institutions to emulate what the council was doing as failure to pay bills made it difficult for the corporation to render services to the nation.

The general manager added that the corporation was yet to embark on a P22 million Waste Water Project in Selebi Phikwe.

The project tender, which closed in August, she said, would be focused on servicing areas not connected to the sewer lines as well as upgrading waste water ponds in the town.

“At the time our ponds were constructed they did not have drying beds to make manure out of dry waste,” said Ms Samu.

She said the project would help improve management of waste in the town, adding that the corporation had engaged companies to help unblock and clean sewer lines.

Further, Ms Samu urged customers and the general public to desist from vandalising the corporation’s infrastructure and throwing unwanted material in the sewer lines.

She said frequent blockages from fats and cow dung from abattoirs were experienced in the sewer lines, resulting in high maintenance of waste water pumps as well as treatment process inefficiency due to overloading of treatment facility beyond its design capacity, which may result in environmental pollution.

On the water supply in Selebi Phikwe, WUC lead engineer, Ms Mokgadi Mabua said the town was supplied with water from Letsibogo Dam, which currently stood at 74 per cent water level.

She said last year around the same period the dam was at 85.3 per cent, attributing this decline to the new Serule water Transfer scheme, which supplied water to the villages of Damochujenaa, Serule, Moreomabele and Topisi.  

“This indicates that we are now drawing more than we used to draw,” she said.

Ms Mabua emphasised water conservation because it was a scarce resource.

Regarding the water supply in Selebi Phikwe she explained that the demand for water was 4.2 mega litres per day against 9.7 mega litres supply, adding that the town did not have any challenging water supply.

She said Selebi Phikwe, which had a total population of about 42 000 had enough storage capacity including upgraded capacity of water tanks at Tobane and Sefhophe.

The corporation further raised a concern over liquid waste produced in the course of trade; in the shops, restaurants, industrial work or research areas.

The corporation’s maintenance engineer Ms Gaongalelwe Dengu explained that WUC waste water facilities were designed for domestic waste water treatment only, but the facilities were currently treating a combination beyond domestic waste.

“This means industries discharging untreated effluent affect or cause malfunction of those facilities,” she said.

She said as per the Trade Effluent Agreement, each of the WUC service centres was to carry out monthly inspections and charge or disconnect non-compliant traders or industries. Ends