P34.3mowed WUC moves to disconnect

Jwaneng Town Council ( JTC) mayor, Olga Ditsie has told a full council meeting recently that the Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) is still battling with debt, which has accumulated to P34.3 million.

“The corporation has tried several methods to collect debt by engaging services of debt collectors and pressure monitoring, which bore fruitless results.

Lastly... the corporation has implemented the last option to recover customer debt effective February 1, 2022, by disconnecting all connections with overdue debt without further notice. The corporation has put in place measures to facilitate easier customer access, and convenience to promote active water account management. I, therefore, urge Honorable Councillors to encourage the public to pay their bills or make payment arrangements to avoid disconnections,” she said.

Ditsie asked the councillors to go and talk to people so that they could go and negotiate with WUC plans of payment. Meanwhile, Ditsie said the wastewater system is still a challenge in her town.

She said the residents should recall that most of the 61 pump stations were either working on low efficiencies or not working at all.

“It is deplorable to inform this

House that blockages are commonly due to disposal of non-biodegradable substances into the system by users. I believe that we need to rise as leaders to police the community against throwing [waste] into the sewage system,” she said.

She, however, said implementation of the replacement pumps in 22 pump stations is ongoing and the project was anticipated to have been completed by now but that could not suffice since materials are procured outside the country.

The mayor said she was informed that the last batch of all materials will be delivered by February 28, 2022, and completion, testing and commissioning of the pump stations will be done as soon as the final materials are delivered. On developmental issues, she said two of the critical pump stations have been commissioned and the third one is expected to be commissioned next week.

On other issues of waste management, she congratulated waste management companies engaged by the council for a job well done since commencing waste collection in the town. “Sadly, our council waste collection service continues to limp as one of our compactor trucks is down and under repair,” Ditsie said. She said the waste collection schedule in areas serviced by the council has been adjusted to avoid a backlog of uncollected waste.