Water rationing sees increase in town’s revenue

DARU Water PNG manager Darlus Lala says revenue has increased after increasing water rationing hours in Western.
“Daru is in the non-revenue generating centres category. We usually generate between K4,000 and K10,000 per month. But last month we generated K60,000 after increasing the water rationing hours to 24 hours. Previously, we rationed water for eight hours daily,” he said.
“I believe Daru has a big potential to generate more revenue. We just have to do maintenance to the pipes and clamp down on illegal connection.”
Water PNG has invested K2million over the last two years to fix up water leakages that were vandalised by the local people.
“But to really upgrade the aging water supply infrastructures, it will require over K2million and currently a contractor is on the ground doing assessment for Water PNG to build a new water system.
“So now we are trying out the 24 hour water rationing services on selected days just to see how we go.
“The current water supply system is over 40 years old and it will be damaged if we operate to the full capacity.” Lala said they usually lost about 80 per cent of water supply through leakages and illegal connections.
“We generate revenue from the 20 per cent water supply to the genuine paying customers,” he said.
“We used to have 1,000 customers. But we have now cut it down to 500 and now we are slowly building up the customer base”.