Water company: Give and take

Mohsen Ali Al-Sihaimi THE National Water Company (NWC) has, over the past years, been providing its services to the citizens in a manner that was replete with loopholes and shortcomings always or at best from time to time. The instances of these shortcomings were the stoppage of water to some houses for weeks that might extend to months. The repeated defects in the water connections. The outflow of water onto the streets forming lakes and puddles. The company’s errors also included disparities in the value of the water bills, inability to cover a number of districts with water supplies and sewage services, the delay in extending water connections and many other faults. These shortcomings are an evidence of the company’s deep-rooted inability, which it attributed to the insufficient financial resources compared to the huge requests from the citizens for its services. Few days ago the Ministry of Water and Electricity surprised the company’s clients with its decision to increase the water bills in a manner that was shocking to a large number of customers. The bills were astronomical, puzzling the customers who could not find any rational justifications for this sudden move. The ministry’s rationale was that, along with the company, they have both been working together for about 10 years to raise awareness about rationalizing water consumption but nobody listened. The ministry said it has been issuing books and pamphlets and using radio and TV programs to rationalize water consumption. It has also been supplying customers with the equipment they should use to rationalize their consumption. It said the joint campaigns with the company to enlighten the customers about the reasonable use of water have failed to bring any results so the only option for it to achieve their goal was through raising water bills. In my opinion, it seems that the burden on the ministry and the company, which made them increase the value of the water bills, was due to two main factors and they are: • The rapid growth of the population, which meant more houses to be supplied with the vital fluid. The end result of this was a rise in the demand for water. • The ministry and the company have not made any efforts to modernize and develop their potentials and human resources to commensurate with the increasing number of the population though they both had huge budgets. I am of the opinion that both the ministry and the company should now be revising the decision to increase water bills. If they, however, insist on it to gain billions of riyals, the customers would expect quality services from them. The ministry and the company will not be able after this to use the excuse of insufficient financial resources for their poor services. They should both realize that after they have accumulated huge sums of money as a result of high water bills, the customers would not any more be ready to accept the frequent water cuts on the pretext of a fault in the main desalination station or because of hot weather. They would not accept non-supply of water because of a rupture in the main water pipe from the stations to the cities. The customers will not accept to see some districts with water and others without it. They will not accept water leakages on to the streets because of the aging pipes. They will definitely not be happy to be told that the services of water and sewage are not extended to each and every neighborhood because of the scant financial resources. The customers will not be willing to accept any mistakes in perfectly calculating the quantity of their consumption as a result of an error committed by the meter reader. So the matter has now boiled down to the principle of “give and take”.