Parliament has given the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) a six-month ultimatum to resolve complaints about exorbitant water bills.

This was announced on Monday, July 10th, 2023, while receiving the report of  the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises (COSASE) following scrutiny into the audit findings by the auditor general in the financial year ended June 30, 2022.

MP Joel Ssenyonyi, the COSASE chairperson, informed parliament that the committee has received complaints from the public on how NWSC estimates their bills and charges exorbitantly without proper justification.

“Complaints about excessive water bills have an impact on the public’s willingness to pay and damage the company’s reputation. The committee urges NWSC to swiftly investigate public concerns, resolve them right away, and provide a report to Parliament within six months,” said Ssenyonyi.

MP Michael Timuzigu (NRM, Kajara County), a member of the committee, suggested that NWSC implement the digital billing component to address the issue of excessive water bills.

“The issue of having bills that cannot be trusted by customers was the same problem with Umeme until they introduced the system of Yaka, which is digital. NWSC should do the same since it does not compete with any other entity,” Timuzigu said.

Parliament also expressed concern over the growing unpaid water bills that stood at Shs212 billion as of June 30, 2022, saying the failure by the government and private water users to clear their water bills is crippling the operations of NWSC and hampering efforts to extend clean piped water to the rest of the country.

Dr.Eng. Silver Mugisha, the MD of NWSC, said the Shs212 billion was accrued in various categories, including Ministries, departments, and Agencies (Shs70.6 billion), domestic purposes (Shs63 billion), commercial consumers (Shs29 billion), industrial purposes (Shs1.6 billion), and Embassies (Shs219 million).

Dr.Mugisha said that the company has not detected any wrongdoing on its part, and some of the high bills could be a result of water leaks.

The committee also tasked NWSC to put into place measures to deter a re-occurrence of financial data loss that occurred on August 18, 2022, when its information technology equipment was hacked into, leading to an interruption of work.

According to the report, there was no up-to-date backup system, and data for the last two months of the Financial Year 2021-2022 went missing, yet it was needed at the time of the audit.