The Gobabis municipality is owed N.dollars 61 million for water and electricity by residents, private companies and government agencies.

This was revealed to Nampa by the town council’s spokesperson, Frederick Ueitele, in a recent interview.

“The challenges of non-payment of municipal accounts are mostly from some residents, government offices, agencies, and some institutions from the private sector,” Ueitele indicated.

The municipality currently disconnects services, especially water and electricity, to residents who do not honour their financial responsibility towards the town council.

According to Ueitele, the council resolved some time back to give preferences to pensioners within the community by granting them lower tariffs than those paid by other residents in the town.

Ueitele also informed Nampa that the Gobabis municipality does not have any contract with Redforce or any other debt collecting agency as they are trying by all means to inspire residents in the town to pay their debts without being forced by a third party.

“The municipality would like to make use of this opportunity to encourage our residents to honour their financial obligations by paying their water and electricity bills and visiting the office to make arrangements for paying whenever there are any challenges for payments,” he added.

The municipality also started with a campaign of encouraging residents, especially those living in informal settlements, to migrate from the current water meter to pre-paid water meters, which according to Ueitele has a special price for pensioners.

“The municipal services provided to the informal settlement are all prepaid, thus, the problem is non-existent. The municipality gets pressure from NamPower and NamWater for outstanding bills, which led the municipality to enter into payment plans for these respective companies not to disconnect these services at the town,” he said.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency