A few years ago Government took a drastic decision to reform the country’s water sector.
As we have now come to witness, it was a reform that carried too many ramifications.
Before the reforms Government reasoned that water provision was spread across too many authorities.
That, continued Government did not augur well for efficiency, cost effectiveness and uniformity in the quality of service rendered.
A decision was thus taken to effectively make Water Utilities Corporation a sole utility in the area of potable water provision.
Before then water provision in the rural areas especially was the responsibility not of WUC but Department of Water Affairs and in some few cases the Water Unit of the Ministry of Local Government.
The far reaching reforms, though clearly and undoubtedly well intended have had negative ramifications, chief of which is that has become clear that WUC was never prepared much less sufficiently resourced to handle the scale of its new mandate.
Infrastructure is not only old, but in some instances was built for a much smaller catchment areas and populations.
Population growth has put unbearable strain on infrastructure that is in some areas already reaching the end of its life span.
The new WUC mandate was made worse by the fact that over and above water, WUC is now expected to also manage sewerage reticulation.
Sewer on its own is a demanding call ÔÇô with its own peculiarities and technical demands.
What then if it is added on an institution that since its inception has never had anything to do with sewer but only water ÔÇô and at a very limited scale since WUC was always confined mainly to urban areas.
From the look of things to say WUC is overburdened would be an understatement.
The reforms have visited lasting and damaging effects on the sustenance and durability of WUC as an economic vehicle to perform a very important mandate.
The Corporation is already collapsing under a heavy load of these duties that are so clearly under capitalised.
There are issues of resources, technical expertise and of course management.
At the beginning we hoped that the difficulties that WUC was going through were temporary birth pains.
It is clear now that our hopes were not only misplaced but wrong.
The hardships of delivery that WUC is going through are enduring and from the look of things multiplying.
While issues surrounding water have somewhat abetted on account of good rains, sewerage has become a big issue.
Early hopes that WUC would with time get to master issues surrounding sewerage either through technical proficiency, depth and capital allocation have faded.
Some areas in the city have literally become cesspools of decay with some pipes overflowing and WUC technicians clearly at a loss on how to bring the situation under control.
The constraints on WUC have turned many residences and indeed city centres into eyesores.
The only that seems to keep WUC safe from public revolt is that our nation seems to have grown tolerant of filth, stench, dirt and general decadence ÔÇô in whatever form those come.
WUC survival hinges on two things: A reversal of the reforms or to re-capitalise the corporation so heavily in line with its new mandate. There is no shortcut solution to it.
Other than that WUC will continue to lumber from one untenable tragedy to the next.
In the end only the public will continue bearing the brunt of the folly that we somehow agreed was a reform.
