LWSC WATER BLUES SHOCKING
Dear Editor,
IWRITE this letter to air my shock and disappointment with somehow inept operations of the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC). I am a resident of the relatively new settlement called former government farms located just after Chunga Township in Barlastone area.
Like many other property owners, I was connected to the LWSC water grid in June 2013 and since then water supply was okay until early this year when some of my neighbours and I started facing serious challenges in that our taps dried up without a single drop for days.
I raised this concern with some LWSC staff who explained that the water shortage in our area was as a result of low pressure the company was experiencing from its supply points. They advised that we should shorten the height of the external tap pipes from the standard altitude which we did.
This intervention worked for some households but for mine and many others nothing has worked out and we have had no reliable water supply for almost six months now. Recently, LWSC sent its workers to install prepaid metres and we informed
them about our water predicament but their response was that there was nothing they could do as their main mission was to install the metres but that they would relay the information to relevant authorities.
Since then we have been waiting for a positive outcome but to no avail. Sometime last month I called the LWSC number 0211257579 and spoke to a certain lady about the water problem we have after which she transferred my call to another office from where I spoke to another lady.
All the second lady told me was to give her my mobile phone number and she promised to call back to give me my complaint number, which I have not received up to now. Now, the most surprising thing is that about two or three of my next door neighbours have water supply but with me it is the same old story. My further concern is that LWSC must have spent a substantial sum of money to procure and install the prepaid metres without assessing the availability of water in a number of households where they fixed the metres.
Is this not a loss to the company because no sane person can be expected to prepay for a commodity or service they are not getting. Besides, my major shock is that LWSC has been billing me for the service I am not getting and just last week I received a bill of a staggering K1, 404 for the service I have not been getting for the past six months. My advice to LWSC is that do a serious survey or assessment to establish households receiving water supply and cancel the bills for those that have not been receiving the service. To cap it all, some people who have sunk boreholes in the neighbourhood are now charging those drawing water from their taps and LWSC expects us to also pay it the bills for the service we have not been receiving?.
The company must pull up its socks and correct all these anomalies because water is life and I believe the Sustainable Development Goal number 6 is on Clean Water and Sanitation- water production, water treatment, water distribution and use.