By: Victor Ofuonye
Cross-sections of frustrated consumers have slammed the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC) for poor service delivery to their areas. These frustrated users of the Utility Company had their voices heard during the 8th Edition of the PURA Consumer Parliament that was held at PURA Head office along Kairaba Avenue, Last Saturday, 30th November 2024.
Haddy Badjie, a resident of Bundung and a NAWEC customer in her complaints noted that their area is faced with acute water shortages, simply because NAWEC has not been consistent in its water supply to their area. She went on to lament that every month, they were religiously given bills by NAWEC for services that the company had failed to deliver.
“We don’t have water in Bundung, our taps are dry, we have complained and nothing seems to be done about it. Our issues are further compounded by the speed at which NAWEC always and religiously distributes bills to us at the end of every month for services they did not deliver to us. The situation is very annoying, it is so bad that we sometimes joke that if Bundung ever had a surname, then that surname must be ‘No Water’, we have stayed for years without our taps ever flowing with water but the bills keep coming,” Haddy lamented.
In conformity with Haddy Badjie, Saidou Leigh, a resident of Busumbala Kumo Dempang revealed that his community has not had water for a very long time.
“Over 454 compounds in Busumbala Kumo Dempang have been without water services for over forty years now, yet there is a main pipe that passes through our locality. The sad thing is that this main pipe has been burst for over a month now and the water spillages from it is spoiling our roads and yet we don’t have water for our homes. We have reported the burst pipes to NAWEC and they are yet to do something about it.
Still, on the issue of poor service delivery by regulated public utilities, the National Assembly Member for Foni KansalaConstituency, Hon. Almamy Gibba, questioned Africell, Comium, and Gamcel to explain why GSM Networks in his constituency has all of a sudden become poor or non-existent since 2017.
“ I would like Africell, Comium, and Gamcel to tell me why their networks that were all good during the Yahya Jammeh administration in my area have today become virtually nonexistent in Foni Kansala,” Hon. Gibba demanded.
In their responses, Musa Sise, Head of Public Communications at Africell, Alieu Dampha, Marketing Manager at Gamcel, and Sarjo Khan, the Commercial Director at Comium all promised that their companies are working on resolving the issues raised by the honorable.
“We have just returned from a country-wide coverage gauge tour. We have observed that there are issues with drops in networks and black holes in Foni. We will resolve these issues within the next 4 months,” stated Musa Sise.
“We promise to improve our coverage within the 1st and 2nd quota of 2025 because we know what the problems are and believe we can fix them,” said Sarjo Khan.
“We will work with our technical teams to remedy the obvious technical problems and promise to sort these out within the next 15 days,” claims Alieu Dampha.
Responding on behalf of NAWEC, Ebima Seckan, Senior Marketing Manager of the Water Division, thanked Saidou Leigh for his contributions and assured him that his Company would immediately repair the burst pipe while also looking into the issue of supplying water to the affected communities.