The organisational restructuring at Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) has cost 450 employees their jobs, it has emerged.
Appearing before the Committee on Statutory Bodies and Enterprises on Monday, WUC Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gaselemogwe Senai, explained that as part of their strategy intervention, the corporation looked into new organisational structure optimisation.
“As you recall, we had embarked on a massive project to restructure the organisation to optimise efficiencies by retaining competencies and skills, but also giving staff opportunity that of their own volition realised that they don’t meet the basic requirements for the newly defined jobs to exit,” he said.
Senai told the Committee, which is chaired by Nkange Member of Parliament (MP), Dr Nevah Tshabang, that the process led to the exit of about 450 staff.
“The staff that we have retained is the one that we are confident has the necessary skills and qualifications to execute the job.”
In addition, as part of their strategy intervention, Senai told the Committee that the Corporation is looking to improve the integrity of its meter reading, which informs billing.
He explained to the Committee that the aim is to reduce the number of non-genuine debts.
“There might be questions about the credibility of our billing, so we have decided to look at the entire value chain to improve the process so that we can better the integrity of our bills,” said Senai.
He said a lot of work has been done in that regard, which has helped WUC to reduce the number of non-genuine debts.
“The debts that we are reporting currently continue to be adjusted and total debt at the moment stands at P1.2 billion”.
He said most of this debt, at about 67 percent, is domestic debt while the government debt, which is categorised as recoverable, accounts for 21 percent of total debt.
“Unfortunately, most of the domestic debt is now past the due date at around 270 days and is categorised as non-recoverable,” Senai revealed.
Meanwhile, Senai said the State of Emergency, which had put a moratorium on water disconnections, has led to accounts eligible for disconnection reaching 70,000 from the pre-Covid-19 figure of 40,000.
This also led to the total debt owed to WUC shooting from P800 million to the current P1.2 billion.
