National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) will in December turn 40 years since 1970 when it started providing water and sewerage services to the Ugandan population. The Independent’s Julius Businge interviewed Alex Gisagara, the Corporation’s acting managing director.
At about 40 years, what is the account?
Indeed it has been a long journey since we started this service in 1970. I will say we have tried to do our best. I estimate that we have moved 30% of the journey towards providing clean water and sewerage services to Ugandans. We are currently serving about 2.3million people out of over 30million Ugandans. Through our corporate social responsibility, we have constructed about 150 public and private shared sanitation facilities in most slum areas in and around Kampala. We have modernised our payment systems and now customers can pay through their mobile phones, ATMs among other means. We have made it easy for our customers to access information through social networks on computers. Through our 24 hour toll free helpline customers are able to raise any complaints to us. Also, customers are free to approach our offices. We are also doing on-spot billing where our staff reaches your home with a machine, take a reading on your meter and then you pay. We are also moving towards the use of prepaid meters; we have so far about 700 prepaid meters in Kampala but these are just on a pilot scheme. We hope to roll out these meters in future when we are ready. In terms of recognition, we have won international awards in financial management, in terms of employment, change management systems and best practise, financial reporting, in ICT innovations, among others.
What are the key factors behind your success?
We have change management systems whereby we encourage our staff to embrace change and look for new ways of making work better and more efficient. We have an open door policy where every staff and well-wishers jet in, give us ideas that often help us move ahead. We have been able to partner with telecom companies, banks to ease payment for our customers. The government of Uganda has always supported our activities; our customers have been responsive in informing us of any anomalies in our service. We have also joined different international water associations which have given us more knowledge on how to manage our utility. We have received a lot of support from other agencies and ministries like the ministry of water and environment, National Forestry Authority and other international agencies.
Any challenges?
We would have moved at a faster pace than we have done. Being in a developing country means, you will not have adequate funding from government. It also means the technology you are using to do your work may not be the best. On the other hand, government activities especially infrastructure development like roads means your water line is going to be interrupted and pipes will burst. You would also expect illegal connections of your water line by some people and above all the high costs of maintaining and connecting water line go up. The other big challenge is on the industries discharging waste, metals and others in our water lines, this makes it super expensive for us to treat the water.
What is your relationship with other utilities across the world?
We have an external services division where we provide external consultancy services to different countries on how to better manage their utility system and through this exposure we have learnt many ways of doing things. We are part of the International Young Water Professionals Program in which we train and encourage young people at the age of 35 and below to engage in the water sector and to better manage the environment.
In the 2012/13 Budget, government proposed the re-instatement of Value Added Tax on piped water. What is the Corporation’s take on that?
Of course that means more money to be paid by customers. But I don’t see that making water expensive, the difference is just 18%. But as National water we work for government and we at most times, recognise that any decisions passed by government through parliament benefit all Ugandans. I think if this tax is collected, the money will be used to do roads and other services that benefit the tax payer. It (tax) is like any other tax that helps the state to serve its people. We should be comfortable with it in case it comes to pass.
What are the plans ahead?
We are going through an expansion and rehabilitation program in Kampala and other urban areas. We think this will double our customer base and increase the physical service coverage from the current over 10% to a higher percentage. We also plan to raise our sewerage coverage from the current about 7% to over 30% by 2020 and by that time we plan to produce over 220 cubic meters of water instead of the current 170.
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