Guyana Water Inc’s (GWI) record of its customers’ accounts is in a poor state with many not verifiable and payments not made by a large number.
This was one of the findings from an audit of the utility which had been commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and recently released on the Ministry of Finance website.
With massive losses being incurred annually at GWI, a clean database and full collection of tariffs are seen as pivotal to the water utility. The audit covered the period January, 2012 to May, 2015.
The audit report cited Public Utilities Commis-sion (PUC) Order No 2/2013 which had said that as a condition of granting increased tariff rates effective July 1, 2013 (which were never implemented) GWI would sanitise its consumer database to reflect legitimate debtors. This was to have been accomplished by Decem-ber 31, 2013 but was not done, the audit found. Meters were also to be read once a quarter and estimated billings were to cease.
The audit said that GWI was aware that there were many deficiencies in the billing system. These included estimations when meters are not read, duplication of accounts and empty and abandoned properties being billed. It said that the Board of Directors set about trying to redress these problems by virtue of a data verification exercise in 2013. The exercise began in February, 2013 with GWI staff and then an external Project Manager was contracted in May, 2013. The exercise covered all the divisions and the core data verification was finished in July, 2014 but extended to November 2014 for further verifications.
The audit said that due to the large number of some categories of records considered invalid, only 71% (126,878) of 179,532 customer records were validated. The audit said that management considered this sample verified as acceptable given the scale, complexity, money disbursed and time assigned to the project. The remaining 29% of records were later assessed to make corrections to the database.
The audit said that the verification determined that the Customer Informa-tion System contained thousands of records that did not pertain to existing customers. The key reasons for them existing in the field but not being on the database were duplicated accounts and properties that could not be found in the field, poorly trained staff and turnover and a large number of accounts pertaining to abandoned buildings.
Of the 19,442 accounts found eventually to be invalid 2,468 were abandoned, 2,124 were duplicated, 3,987 were closed and there was no property pertaining to 6,099 of them.
In relation to the valid 160,090 accounts, there were thousands of records where no payments were made prior to 2006 and between the period 2006 to 2013. The verification showed that 22,467 customers made no payment pre 2006. Taking the pre-2006 period and going up to 2013, 42,583 customers made no payments. For the year 2014, only 117,507 customers out of 160,090 paid rates – or 73%. The largest number of defaulters were from Georgetown and on the East Coast Demerara.
Further, of the 160,090 accounts on the database, 26,594 are disconnected accounts. The audit surmised that these customers may now have illegal connections or there was a lapse in management informing them and therefore these customers are not being billed.
At the time of the audit, the report said that the customer database in Hi-Affinity remained without any significant changes that were recommended. The audit further stated that the Board of Directors has retained the services of a consultant to review the billing database to prune it to reflect customers who are receiving services. The audit noted that this would have a positive impact on revenue and help the company achieve its commitment to 95% billing accuracy.
