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Friday, January 31, 2025

WASA revenue drops 44% in two weeks

by

Chester Sambrano
1747 days ago
20200419
FILE: Ag WASA CEO Alan Poon King, right, turns on a tap at Phipps Trace Extension in Talparo. Looking on is MP Maxie Cuffie and residents in September last year.

FILE: Ag WASA CEO Alan Poon King, right, turns on a tap at Phipps Trace Extension in Talparo. Looking on is MP Maxie Cuffie and residents in September last year.

Ralph Banwarie

As a so­cial mea­sure to as­sist cit­i­zens, the gov­ern­ment asked pub­lic util­i­ties not to en­force dis­con­nec­tion for non-pay­ment of bills. It’s a mea­sure that has eased up cus­tomers but added pres­sure on the fi­nances of al­ready cash-strapped Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Since the au­thor­i­ty closed pay­ment cen­tres two weeks ago on March 30, WASA has seen a re­duc­tion in rev­enue of at least 44 per cent.

In Au­gust last year, it was re­port­ed that WASA was owed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $700 mil­lion by cus­tomers.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia CEO (Ag) of WASA, Alan Poon King de­scribes the most re­cent drop in rev­enue as sig­nif­i­cant.

“We still do want to col­lect rates where pos­si­ble, we en­cour­age cus­tomers to pay on­line; we need fund­ing, ob­vi­ous­ly, to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing the busi­ness.”

And though some cus­tomers are un­able to make pay­ments to­ward their wa­ter sup­ply it doesn’t mean that a re­li­able con­nec­tion isn’t need­ed. In fact, it is need­ed now more than ever, due to the fact that peo­ple are be­ing ad­vised to wash hands more reg­u­lar­ly and main­tain clean­er spaces and cloth­ing.

Poon King said this fac­tor, cou­pled with sev­er­al oth­ers is al­so bur­den­ing WASA’s wa­ter sup­ply ef­forts.

“The in­crease that we would have had...su­per­im­pose that with the dry sea­son con­di­tions that we are hav­ing now and that kind of am­pli­fies our prob­lem.”

Call for pa­tience

The CEO said that while there are some peo­ple re­ceiv­ing wa­ter for the first time, he con­ced­ed that some aren’t that lucky.

He said WASA is do­ing what it could to al­le­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tion. He asked that they not lose hope.

“The wa­ter that we have avail­able we will try to ad­just our sched­ules as best as we can to get wa­ter to you in the pipes and if there is a short­com­ing there we will have to pro­vide the truck-borne. We will need the pa­tience of the pop­u­la­tion if you are in such a sit­u­a­tion.”

As men­tioned there is cur­rent­ly a wa­ter sched­ule in place to help the au­thor­i­ty man­age its sup­ply to as many cus­tomers as pos­si­ble.

He said the truck-borne sup­ply op­tion is al­so avail­able and be­ing utilised by many.

He ex­plained low wa­ter re­serves and a high­er de­mand for wa­ter is prov­ing to be a chal­lenge.

Peo­ple still wast­ing wa­ter

Mean­while Poon King ex­pressed frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment that even amid the wa­ter short­fall and high de­mand some in so­ci­ety are still wast­ing wa­ter.

He said ac­tiv­i­ties like us­ing a hose to wash ve­hi­cles and wa­ter lawns are still pro­hib­it­ed ac­cord­ing to the cur­rent wa­ter re­stric­tions. He said more mon­i­tor­ing and en­force­ment are nec­es­sary.

“We need to, es­pe­cial­ly over the next four to six weeks as we tran­si­tion in­to the wet sea­son. So we will be hav­ing an in­creased pres­ence.”

He re­it­er­at­ed a pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed po­si­tion that the mea­gre fine of $75 to $225 is not enough and plans are afoot to have that amend­ed. In the past few months at least 70 peo­ple have been charged for breach­ing WASA reg­u­la­tions.

“The law as a whole is sub­ject to a larg­er re­view that we are un­der­tak­ing as one part of the bas­ket of ini­tia­tives to im­prove WASA.”

He said there are fig­ures be­ing con­sid­ered but isn’t yet ready to make a pub­lic pro­nounce­ment.

In the mean­time, he plead­ed for peo­ple to do the right thing.

“Con­serve, con­serve, con­serve and en­sure that we have the per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our wa­ter us­age.”

WASA at work

Poon King al­so ex­plained that a lot of work is be­ing done to change out age­ing in­fra­struc­ture, drilling new wells, con­struct­ing new wa­ter treat­ment plants and boost­ing sta­tions, in­stalling and re­plac­ing pipelines as well as fix­ing leaks around the coun­try.

“So all those ini­tia­tives are geared to­ward in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ments in the sup­ply but it’s an on-go­ing process that has to con­tin­ue.”

The WASA boss said even though its work­force is af­fect­ed by COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions as well, the work­ers will con­tin­ue to do what is nec­es­sary to en­sure re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply to the na­tion.


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