By Mbatjiua Ngavirue WINDHOEK Wednesday is D-day for Okakarara Hospital to pay the roughly N$250ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000 it still owes the Okakarara Town Council in outstanding water bills. If the regional office of the Ministry of Health does not pay the bill by February 7, the hospital could find itself in the embarrassing position of having its water cut off again. The town already disconnected the hospital’s water for over a week between January 15 and 23 because of non-payment of water bills. Principal Medical Officer at Okakarara Hospital, Dr Noel Siame, said the sudden interruption in the water supply did not however disrupt operations at the hospital. During the week or so that the water was cut off, the hospital relied on water from its own borehole, which it pumps into storage tanks. “The hospital was running smoothly, with only a few hiccups. There is provision for pumping from the borehole, just in case,” Siame said. Patients and staff only suffered minor inconvenience when the storage tanks ran dry and they had to wait for the engines to fill the tanks again. The hospital’s water supply was only restored after intense negotiations to iron out a disagreement about how much the hospital actually owed the town council. The original account presented to the hospital for payment was for around N$400ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000, which the hospital hotly disputed. “We thought the bills were exaggerated, and we also found numerous discrepancies,” Siame remarked. The hospital told the municipality it was ready to pay as soon as the council corrected the errors in the account. “Payments were being made. It is not as though we went for long periods without paying; it’s just that our books showed different amounts from what they claimed we owed,” he explained. Chief Executive Officer of Okakarara Town Council, Nathaniel Karuaihe, blamed the previous administration at the town council for the problem with the hospitals account. Some of the amounts the council thought the hospital owed were in fact paid, but the person responsible never entered the payments into the computer system, and receipts later went missing. Lengthy discussions lasting two days, during which officials examined and re-examined documents, finally resulted in an agreement between the parties. Fortunately for her, the administrator at the hospital was more diligent about keeping records than council officials and she could prove her case with hard evidence. Karuaihe, however, says they carried out the talks in a very good spirit, and the amount owed by the hospital was reduced from N$400ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000 to N$250ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000. The council also agreed to give the hospital a grace period up to February 7 to settle its account. Siame says the hospital has now submitted the revised bill to the regional office of the ministry for payment. “We can’t pay without an invoice, and they delayed in preparing the correct invoice,” he argued. Okakarara Mayor Jackson Kandukira seems to feel that part of the problem is that residents and institutions in the town appear reluctant to recognize the authority of the town council. “We have an open-door policy. They had plenty of time to dispute the bill we sent them, but they only came to discuss it with us when we were ready to cut the water off,” he noted. Kandukira warned that if the hospital did not meet the February 7 deadline for paying the outstanding balance of N$250ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000, it might have its water disconnected again. “We felt it was time to put our foot down. It’s impossible to run a town council without any income,” he said.