GWI on mission to sustain viability

Jul 08, 2009 News

Driven by the need to sustain its economic viability, Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) is on a mission to ensure that all of its customers are metered.
According to Chief Executive of the water company, Yuri Chandisingh, “metering is integral to the reduction of non-revenue water so we have no choice but to push ahead with our meter coverage.”
At a recent press conference it was revealed that at the end of last year 30 percent of the GWI customers were metered. However, based on the company’s turn-around plan it is projected that 50 percent of its customers will be metered within the next two years.
Metering the customers, according to Chandisingh, is of great importance.
It will encourage them to conserve thus allowing the company to utilise less energy and less chemicals for areas that get treated water.
Ultimately operational cost will be reduced, the Chief Executive underscored, which will see an increased amount of funds being made available for capital interventions and investment.
And according to him GWI has also engaged a massive campaign aimed at collecting outstanding revenue.
He related that there have been improvements in the fields in terms of customers paying outstanding sums owed; even as the water entity continues to reduce its debts via write offs and other concessions regarding those areas where many customers have not traditionally gotten a proper service.
“In some areas they have not gotten any water for a period until recently with the company’s capital investment programme kicking in, in a more substantial manner.” As such he noted there are areas that are now either getting water for the first time in years or now getting an improved service.
“What we are doing is looking at the period during which they were not getting a proper service and factoring that into their bills so that they will receive bills truly reflective of the service that they would have actually received as against being billed for service that they may not have received.
So in that respect we are reducing our debt so it is two-fold via write offs and via improvement of our collection,” Chandisingh related.
However, he pointed out that the fact remains that GWI has not in the past been reading its meters in the desired manner and at the intervals that is required which has resulted in some customers receiving estimated bills over time.
“We are correcting that but there will be a few cases where customers will still be getting estimated bills.
As you will very well imagine any corrective action on our part will not bear fruit at the flick of a switch, it will take some time,” Chandisingh admitted.
According to him those customers who are now getting bills based on actual readings will no doubt be quite please that their current situation will eventually change in a noticeable way. He added though, that it would take some time to move the meter reading cycle in the manner intended to reduce the instance of estimated bills.

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GWI on mission to sustain viability

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