Plug the leaks :: Mmegi Online

For many households, the Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) is the very definition of ‘Evil Corp’, a predatory organisation that over bills consumers, strong-arms them into paying, while failing to supply the very product consumers require, on a sustainable basis.

WUC is quite unpopular particularly among urban consumers whose higher level of tariff subsidises rural consumers and who have no alternative supply other than the Corporation’s often shaky distribution.

A closer look at the WUC however reveals a formerly profitable and efficient parastatal, worn ragged by the addition of an almost unfair mandate and with insufficient support from its sole shareholder, government. The WUC troubles today hark back to the 2009 Water Sector Reform Programme under which the utility took over national water supply, with scant attention paid to complexities around the tariff differentials, costs of the expanded distribution, maintenance, staff complement and others.

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