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Months after it ended its COVID-19 Assistance Programme (CAP), the National Water Commission (NWC) is warning Jamaicans that there will be no more concessions for those who fail to pay their water bills.
Under the CAP, residential and condominium customers who were behind in bill payments as at May 31, 2020, were eligible for a 30 per cent discount, while commercial customers could benefit from a 25 per cent discount on outstanding balances as of May 31, 2020.
But addressing a media briefing yesterday, NWC head Mark Barnett said the concessions are over and done.
"We started at the end of 2020 where we would have come out of a CAP where we were offering 25, up to 30 per cent concessions to customers on outstanding bills. Some customers took the offer, some customers didn't because, like many previous situations, customers were expecting that the initiative would last for a lifetime. However, that is not the case," said Barnett.
He argued that Jamaicans are demanding that the NWC meets all their needs without considering the costs facing the company.
"Oftentimes because NWC is Government there is always the tendency that everything should be given up, but nobody seems to think that NWC carries its own responsibilities, and so when do we stop these giving, giving?... Over the years it has always been what can I get from this government entity, but not necessarily how do I take responsibility.
"We can't continue to be giving on the basis that we have our commitment to satisfy you the customers," argued Barnett.
He underscored that the NWC is the largest customer of the Jamaica Public Service Company with huge energy bills to pay each month, even when it fails to collect from its customers.
"So we have to assess as a company what can we give, what can't we give, and understand what our obligations are. So there is no initiative coming, neither now nor very soon, that is going to give any concessions at all to customers in any wide scale way," added Barnett,
He said that since January this year the NWC has targeted 21,771 accounts, which owed a total of $2.26 billion, for disconnection. Of that number 17,862 have been disconnected, valued at $1.94 billion. Just over 9,300 of those accounts have been reconnected, with the NWC collecting approximately $500 million.
"Every time we disconnect a customer it simply means my active customer base is reducing, so it is not something that we are happy to do, and we don't consider it as punitive, it is really an incentive for customers to recognise that they have an obligation, a responsibility... to pay their bills," Barnett declared, in keeping with the company's mantra that it "would rather collect than disconnect".
The NWC boss said his agency is losing billions of dollars each year in providing potable water for which it does not collect.
"My last estimate is that we are losing about $18 million per day and we can extrapolate that per year... and that is why investment in NRW (non-revenue water)... investment in formalised infrastructure [has to be done]," said Barnett as he pointed out that the company cannot just provide water to informal communities without all arrangements in place.
Barnett declared that a big part of the NWC's energy bill is pushed up by people who are stealing water that the company pays to deliver to them.
"When people don't pay for water, when people are stealing water, they give not a hoot, because they don't turn off the pipes at all. If they were stealing and being conservative my cost would be much less. But that is not the attitude that we see," declared Barnett.