Water & Sewerage pays $22M more than it earns yearly
While the Water & Sewerage Department collects an average of $5 million yearly for supplying water to the territory, it has to pay some $27 million annually to water suppliers contracted to provide potable water to homes.
This means that the Department is operating at a $22 million deficit yearly.
Utilities Minister Kye Rymer made the revelation while speaking in the House of Assembly on March 10.
“When calculated, this equates to the Water & Sewerage Department recouping a mere 14 per cent of its operating expenditure when compared to the current losses in excess of 80 per cent in revenues,” Minister Rymer explained.
He said the installation of 5,325 ultrasonic digital water meters currently being placed across the territory is one of the first measures the government is employing to tackle the water deficit.
“This will lead to a more efficient and effective water accountability and billing system,” Rymer assured.
Rymer said the Water & Sewerage Department has adopted a customer-centred approach as the office has been bombarded with a myriad of complaints from customers who have issues with their water bills.
“In an effort to effectively and efficiently address all customer concerns in a timely manner, the department has optimized its customer service team that will focus on receiving queries, investigating situations and providing options to remedy these situations,” the Minister said.
Recently due to COVID-19, residents with outstanding water bill balances were offered a three-month grace period on disconnections from January 18 until Friday, April 30.
During this period, customers including those with bill discrepancies are being encouraged to make arrangements to bring their accounts current.
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Thats because since Fraser trisd to start no one else has invested anything in water and sewage and was happy for everyone to steal water. The billing system is s**t and needs a new one.
FRaser was the only politician in 20 years that understood the Govt should be investing in utilities and infrastructure.
Guess that would be the case to turn it to a GSB
Water should be a basic human right provided by the government from the taxes it extracts. The thought of this government owned entity cutting off peoples water during this financial crisis entirely created by the same government, is disgraceful.
Another couldn’t care less attitude by Fat Alberts Gang.
You are surely unreasonable if you want to pay nothing at all. How would the utilities survive. I am quite businesses are willing to take partial payments if you ask but you cannot expect to be using the service for free forever. How would you ever get the bill paid?
If they spend $27 million it could probably be done for $15m. That is not a lot from the government budget. Everyone should be entitled to an adequate supply of clean water in a civilized country. It should not depend on your ability to pay.
And then they wonder why the UK should step in? Unbelievable, I would be too ashamed to utter this nonsense and this is not a VIP thing, it has always been a problem.
The first part of this article does not make sense.
How do you pay out $27m, yet only collect $5m? Shouldn’t your invoices at least be a reflection of what you are collecting? And this seems to be only to water suppliers on contract.
Can someone explain the first paragraph of the article for me please. I really do not understand it.
In a nutshell, water & sewage provides water but does not produce water. They pay private companies 27 mil annually to produce the water but only charge their customers 5 mil per year.
bvi economics.
works in every industry
They need to check the values and statistics properly. Most of the water claimed to be generated and supplied to customer was lost in transit because of burst or damaged pipes as was detected by this government .
Many customers did not get water supply for weeks but just receiving outrageous estimated bills.
The appropriate things will be having the meters replaced and pipes properly fixed, with genuine pipes and charge customers appropriately. Customers should not be given outrageous bills for water and services they are not given.
u know what coming next the water rate will increase.?
Everything increasing.
That money invested somewhere Els,, you can’t tell me you spend 23 million..roll out your invoices and let’s see who get those contracts..and what the project was about..