RUNDU – Many Rundu residents continue to defy town council’s call by illegally connecting water to their homes and businesses, a situation that has in turn impacted negatively on the town’s revenue collection.
As a result, council has been struggling to contain its water and electricity bill, amongst other challenges.
Council is now heavily indebted to NamWater and has delayed salaries for its employees in September.
The situation means that even residents who religiously paid for their water are caught up in the mess, as council struggles to pay its suppliers, chiefly the utilities.
Last year alone council recorded 831 such illegal connections.
The town’s acting CEO Sikongo Haihambo is trying to curb the corrupt act by sending his staff to undertake site inspections at various residents and businesses to ensure residents do not continue their illegal water consumptions and that council enhances its positive revenue collection from water.
“We have discovered some illegal connections and we will continue fighting, and what we have is just a tip of the iceberg. A regional councillor is involved as well, as you may have picked up, we are still picking up more illegal water connections,” Haihambo noted.
“We are still tallying up for this year, on Tuesday we covertly went out to sniff out illegal connections while doing meter readings. We will not be announcing our operations for obvious reasons, if found guilty the fine will be a N$10 000 per incident,” he added.
On Monday the acting CEO told New Era that residents have not been making life easier for council especially with these illegal water connections, adding that some council staff and politicians are also involved in the scam.
Haihambo says he is consulting his senior management on how to resolve this issue.
“Not only how, but we are going to move towards acting against the culprits. As you may have picked up, these illegal water connections are not only coming from certain community members but also from some council staff. This situation is widespread and as council we have a lot of work to do to save the town from this predicament,” he said.