…to take legal action against 300 customers

By Tamica Garnett

THE Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) is owed over $3B in arrears from delinquent customers, and the company wants its money, with plans to take approximately 300 such customers to court, even as it already has some 40 ongoing cases in the High Court.

Though litigation is a last resort, getting Guyanese to pay their water bills using subtle methods continues to be a challenge for the company, so customers who owe in excess of $50,000 must pay up or face the courts. “We currently have about 300 customers from Regions Five, Four on the East Bank and East Coast to commence litigation against. About 30-40 matters are currently in the High Court between Berbice and Georgetown. We also have lists from Region Two that came in recently that may be another 30–40 customers. So we have quite a heavy load to start 2020 with,” related GWI Secretary to the Board, Nigel Niles.

“We usually focus on customers that owe in excess of $50,000 as a start. We issue demand letters to them, if they don’t respond then we move to the High Court. There are other customers that we try to use other methods of persuasion to get those customers to pay. The cost to take persons to court because they owe $10,000 or $5000 it’s not worth it, so we’re focusing on customers who owe more than $50,000 as a start, to see what kind of response we get from them.”

He was, at the time, fielding questions from the media, on Tuesday, at the company’s “Performance Review 2019” year-end press conference held at their Vlissengen Road Headquarters.

According to the review report, for 2019, the company was able to garner some $5.1B in revenues, which represented a 20 per cent increase from the previous year, however, the company’s expenditure continues to overpower its revenue, given its increasing needs to expand and develop services to customers. “We’re not at a profit as yet because we still have an outstanding debt of about $3B for customers who haven’t paid,” shared GWI Managing Director, Dr. Richard Van-West Charles.

Van-West Charles explained that many of the customers owe arrears in excess of 90 days, one of the reasons the company shifted from billing customers in quarter year increments and moved to monthly billing. “We can see who paid their bills within 30 days, within 60 days, and who have gone beyond 90 days. So we’re trying to shift people from 90 days to 30 days. There is a heavy debt of people who haven’t paid for more than 90 days, so we are concentrating on that,” Van West-Charles related.

With the utility effecting several advancement and developments including increasing the number of citizens with access to water supply, now more than ever, every dollar counts. It’s also important that the payments are made on time. “I have calls from customers saying they didn’t know we were going to disconnect for $3000. If we have 50,000 customers owing $3000, that’s a lot of money. It is important that customers pay on the due date. It is expected that customers pay their bills on time so that we can provide an even better service to customers across the country,” he declared.

“We have to ensure customers now pay on time. It is not a position that we can move away from we have to push ahead to ensure your payment is on time in order for us to move ahead and respond to the mission.” Aside from non-paying customers, illegal connections is another challenge that continues to weight on the company’s resources, and one the company is also taking citizens to court over. “If you have a problem and you cannot sublet the supply. We have a number of illegal connections not necessarily by small people – by big people. The corporate secretary and attorney have been busy in the courts and we will continue to address the issue of illegal connection,” he pledged.

Dr. Van-West Charles explained that the company is also exploring the technology to be able to remotely disconnect delinquent customers, particularly because there are some areas where customers do not take nicely to having their unpaid service disconnected, and get physical with the GWI disconnection staff.

“Some of the areas are high-risk areas, so we’re also looking at the introduction of meters that we can look at remote disconnection. Some of our crews have been attacked in some of these communities. And therefore we are in discussion with a company to look at the purchase of some meters that we can remotely disconnect,” Van-West Charles shared.

Aside from the mounting debt, Van-West Charles notes that the company is still striving to have the across-the-board equity in how customer are charged for the water supply they consume, particularly given that unmetered customers are using the most and paying the least.

“What is happening is about 70 per cent of the collections are coming from our metered customers, and the rest from unmetered. In terms of water usage, larger amount is used by the unmetered customers compared to that of the metered. So it is imperative for us to ensure that there is equity in the system by metering customers. The level of service in the system will improve significantly with the 100 per cent metering. It would mean we have more in flows for us to do much more,” he explained.

“The metering is a still for us to have better efficiency. We have shown that once we complete the metering GWI will be able to respond to all of its suppliers on a timely basis. And if customers pay on time we don’t have issues, and we can even pay our staff better.”

The company acknowledges that inflexible and inefficient customer information and billing system remains a challenge, however, and plans to address this in 2020, using a number of technological methods including the replacement of customer information and billing system; the introduction to electronic meter reading; the introduction of bill payment via the GWI mobile app; the introduction of E-billing via email and looking at the regional bill production and dissemination of bills, instead of having that done at the central level, as currently obtains.