NWSC recovers Shs6.5b from illegal users
Jinja.
The United States Agency for International Development (Usaid) has lauded the management of National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) Jinja for spearheading research on how water utilities in East Africa can curb revenue loss arising from illegal water use.
Speaking to officials from regional water utilities on a tour of the newly installed water metering systems in Jinja District recently, Mr McCormick Scott, the chief of party for the Usaid-funded Planning for Resilience in East Africa through Policy, Adaptation, Research and Economic Development project, said the success registered in Jinja, is a lesson the utilities in the region should study to address the revenue losses.
“This is a climate change project for the Lake Victoria Basin Commission. NWSC approached us for support to reduce none revenue water. They were pumping water into the system but were losing 45 per cent of the revenue,” he said.
He said the project, which started in 2014, is helping water utilities in the region address challenges faced in the delivery of water and sanitation services. He cited Jinja which had many illegal water connections, bad meters and vandalism on the network which they helped the water utility to address.
The project with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya brought together officials from utilities in Rwanda, Tanzania Zanzibar and Kenya to study the Jinja systems.
Mr Titus Niwamanya, the senior commercial officer billing and IT at NWSC in Jinja, said before the project, they lost 45 per cent of the revenue from water they pumped into the system because water users in the area were ignorant about the importance of clean water to their lives.
“We used to bill Shs1.28b monthly but it went to Shs1.6b from November 2014 to date, we raised Shs300m from fines and recovered arrears of Shs6.2b,” he said.
