NWSC records rapid growth in e-water payment system
The National Water and Sewerage Corporation physical bills that were previously being delivered door to door. PHOTO / COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Speaking during recognition of its revenue collection partners at the weekend, Mr Jude Mwoga, the NWSC director information and business solutions, said since phasing out cash offices in 2010, they now collect Shs45b in monthly revenue, which represents a 95 percent efficiency level.
National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) has said the e-payments system it launched in 2010 now collects Shs45b as monthly revenue.
Speaking during recognition of its revenue collection partners at the weekend, Mr Jude Mwoga, the NWSC director information and business solutions, said since phasing out cash offices in 2010, they now collect Shs45b in monthly revenue, which represents a 95 percent efficiency level.
“In this 11 or 12-year journey of recognising the context of increase in geographical coverage from 23 to 260 towns, without e-water, it would have been a big operational challenge to collect revenue from new customers but e-water enabled us to provide customers options to pay water bills,” he said, noting that after phasing out the cash offices in 2010, there had been fear of a drop in revenue performance and an increase in default rates.
However, he noted, performance instead grew remarkably, amid a huge reduction in operation costs. The e-water system also cut long queues in banks and NWSC offices through which customers paid bills.
In 2010 NWSC engaged partners including mobile money companies, points of sale and online payment platforms, to shift from traditional payment systems that had been considered limiting and inaccessible.
Mr George Okol, the NWSC deputy managing director finance, commercial and customer care, said when they phased out the cash offices in 2010, they did not know what they were walking into but were fed up with a tedious manual cash reconciliation processes, which also entailed hiring bullion vans to transport cash from their offices to banks.
However, he said, the decision has set NWSC on a pedestal of growth.
“Some of the things we have done at NWSC at 50 years, have set us off for another 50 years,” he said, noting that there was need, however, for payment partners to find ways through which the cost of paying bills can be drastically reduced.
NWSC also urged payment partners to increase coverage to ensure that monthly collections at least increase to an average of Shs55b.
