Silver Mugisha, the NWSC Managing Director
Parliament has adopted the recommendation demanding to have National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) address the complaints raised by the public on exorbitant water bills within six months.
The directive followed a recommendation in the report by Parliament’s Committee of Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) on the audit findings into the financial statements of NWSC in 2021/2022, where Joel Ssenyonyi (Nakawa West) informed Parliament that the Committee got complaints from members of the general public that NWSC estimates their bills and charges exorbitantly without proper justification, saying that in some months the water bills are extremely high yet there has been no change in the amounts of water they consume.
Responding to the concerns before the Committee, Silver Mugisha, Managing Director NWSC confirmed that the Corporation too had got similar complaints from the public over time, but the Corporation had not detected any wrong doing on their part, and that some of the high bills could be as a result of leakages in pipes.
Ssenyonyi informed Parliament that NWSC had indicated that the Corporation was embarking on internal investigations to be sure there are no mistakes or wrongdoing by their staff in this respect.
“Complaints of inflated water bills affect the willingness of the public to pay and taint the image of the corporation. The Committee recommends that NWSC expedite the process of investigating the public complaints and sorts them out with immediacy and provide a report on the same to Parliament within 6 months after the adoption of the report,” remarked Ssenyonyi.
Peter Okot (Tochi County) asked some of the Ugandans complaining about the inflated to check the nature of their connections noting, “National Water has got two ways of billing, if you aren’t careful, they can easily connect you and charge you at not residential use. Many people at construction time, they are charged under industrial use and even when you complete, they maintain that so if you aren’t careful, they continue charging you, that is when you find that the bill keeps on going higher.”
Michael Timuzigu (Kajara County) argued that the issue of inflated bills was the same problem is with Umeme, until they introduced the yaka system and wondered if NWSC can emulate the same stating, “This Corporation may not be competing with any other, we may not encourage them to be proactive, so I propose that the Minister in charge should look at bringing the digital component of billing in the same organisation so that we can know if your bill is normal, there is no water so you can pay, that will solve the problem and we shall stop mistrusting the Corporation.”
However, Timuzigu isn’t the first person to front pre-paid water metres, but NWSC has always argued that although this billing would be ideal, such meters would require each Ugandan user to pay Shs1M for installation, this making them unsustainable for common water consumers.
Christine Apolot (Kumi DWR) asked NWSC to engage in more sensitisation masses on payment of water bills, citing the scenario in Kumi district where residents have abandoned tap water to other sources noting, “As I speak now, many people have closed the taps, they no longer use the taps because they complain of the high charges, so even if the report is saying because of leakages we need to do a lot to actually sensitize our people and give them more information on why that is happening and so, the challenges must be addressed to encourage people to pay so that they consume the water.”
