Minister attacks Wasco

MASERU – WATER Minister Nkaku Kabi has lambasted the Water and Sewerage Company (Wasco) for providing “shoddy services” to Basotho.
Kabi said this at the launch of a progress report on Wasco operations from June last year.

“My ministry gets verbally attacked every day because people need water,” Kabi said.
“Their attacks are not for attention seeking but because water is essential in everyday activity. One can’t survive without it.”
Kabi said if Wasco could do its job it would rescue them from being attacked.

“Wasco is incompetent and we can’t sugarcoat it as if things are OK,” he said.
“It needs to be managed better and failure to do so calls one to leave the job for those who can do it because this affects Basotho badly.”
The Water Minister does not have legal powers to directly dismiss the company’s staff but he has control over the board which can fire senior employees.

Kabi said this barely seven months after the board suspended the Wasco CEO Futho Hoohlo on allegations that he violated the company policies by seconding a senior employee to the National Covid-19 Secretariat (Nacosec).
Hoohlo was also accused of sitting on the boards of other companies during his working hours at Wasco.
Hoohlo took the matter to the Labour Court which overturned the board’s decision on grounds that he was not afforded a hearing.
He said there was a crisis with burst pipes.

He said it is confusing as pipes are not well covered and they end up being destroyed by cars.
“Pipes are often maintained and it is a loss as it takes months for those pipes to be repaired. It’s so embarrassing,” he said.
“Should we be proud that we own Wasco as a parastatal although it’s not productive?” he asked rhetorically.
“Wasco really has to offer a strategic solution that gives hope.”

He said he received a lot of complaints following the Greater Maseru Project that was allocated money in 2016 which was meant to provide water to some parts of the city but to date nothing has happened.
“The consultant has been studying non-stop, what’s really happening?”
He said water is exported to South Africa because it is believed that Lesotho has lots of it.

“Basically, Basotho don’t have water,” he said, highlighting that the population is growing rapidly.
“We shoulder that bad service but those given the responsibility to manage the project have to be clear whether they will manage the project and not be in between because that’s what they get paid to do,” he said.
He suggested that Wasco should use smart metering.
“Wasco needs innovative ways to ease everyone’s life.”

The Wasco Acting Director of Operations and Maintenance, Thelejane Thelejane, said they have a challenge with connections.
“It’s unfortunate that we failed to connect people on time,” he said.
He said last year, they decided to stop taking applications for new connections.

“We managed to work on them but we were not as successful as we expected. There are 1 400 applications left behind in Maseru only.”
He said he instructed the Wasco board to ensure that the connections are done within two months.
He also said they are dealing with a major backlog in 16 other centres.
Thelejane said pipes are not covered well because of soil erosion and it’s a major problem.
However, he said that was not the case everywhere.

“We realised that our contractors create problems as well and we decided to have a team within maintenance department to cover them and look for private contractors to help us,” he said.
He said they need help to teach people about water bills.
He said there are times that Wasco fails to read one’s water meter but just makes estimates of the amount of water consumed.

“It gets read even if a Wasco person didn’t go to the tap owner’s place. It’s a challenge because if the owner doesn’t trust how they have been billed they refuse to pay,” he said.
“We need help to teach the public about our operations.”
Thelejane said they are in the process of implement smart metering to deal with the challenges.

Mapule Motsopa