ILLEGAL WATER CONNECTIONS FRUSTRATE AVRL'S OPERATION (PAGE 29)

Illegal water connections continue to hamper quality service delivery by the Aqua Vitens Rand Limited to customers in the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolis.
The illegal operations also deny the Ghana Water Company Ltd of its revenue.
Recently the Loss Control Unit of the AVRL discovered that some customers had illegally diverted water supply lines to their sale points where they sold water to members of the public without paying the accrued revenue to the provider of the service. These customers are reported to have acquired their service lines for domestic use but diverted the water into huge water reservoirs on their premises for sale.
Sometimes the illegal connection is done on the line leading to the premises of the customer, which means that the water does not pass through any meter to enable the AVRL to obtain its revenue.
The Regional Customer Services Manager, Nana Ewusi-Mensah, led newsmen to the premises of a customer, Janet Attiogbe of House Number PT95A Takoradi. He said such illegal acts were a drain on the revenue generation of the company.
Nana Ewusi-Mensah said in April 2006, when the line was extended to the customer’s premises, their consumption, according to the meter at the time, was 96,000 litres a month.
“But the consumption kept dropping steadily, and as we speak consumption has dropped from 96,000 litres to as low as 11,000 litres a month,” he said.
The customer services manager said the difference of more than 85,000 litres monthly had become a loss which started three months after the line was extended to the premises of the customer.
Asked how they managed to detect the loss, he said there was a record of every customer which indicated their consumption rate but since that dropped without any tangible reason they had to visit the customer to verify.
Nana Ewusi-Mensah said it was through a check on the line that they realised the illegality.
He said a lot of money was spent on the treatment of the water before it was passed to the final consumer at a highly subsidised cost.
“If this amount of water is diverted and the revenue goes to people who want to cheat the system then we are in trouble. It is a great loss to the company and we cannot talk about efficient and effective service delivery if we continue to cheat the system; people must change”, he said.
“I want to use this opportunity to let customers know that the Loss Control Unit of the company has every right to visit customers to check on their operations”, he said.
Mr Sampson Ampah, the Regional Public Relations Manager, urged members of the general public to report such illegal activities to the company or through their toll-free number, 0800-40000.
“The focus is to ensure that we give uninterrupted service to our customers and generate the expected revenue to guarantee a continuous service to the nation, but acts of this nature are a complete setback for us,” he said.
He warned that the Loss Control Unit was on the loose and would fish out customers who had connected water to their premises illegally.