Mass water disconnection exercise hits Kasena Nankana Municipal Assembly

Consumers and property owners have been hit by a wave of exercises in the municipality. Some of the exercises are at their tail end of finishing whilst others are intensely commencing or vigorously underway.

The exercises include collection of property rates under the supervision of the staff of Kasena Nankana Municipal Assembly, collection of payments for arears conducted by the staff of Ghana Water Company Limited.

The officers also undertook conversion and replacement of analog postpaid meters with digital prepaid meters from Northern Electricity Development Company, respectively.

Although the replacement of meters by NEDCO is free of charge, a consumer is compelled to top up immediately, to avoid automatic disconnection after the exhaustion of the transitional token topup supposed to last a few hours or days.

The exercise began sometime at the beginning of the month of November this year when staff of GWCL threatens massive water disconnection exercise, which warnings were often stamped on monthly billing cards.

In a telephone conversation with a consumer who was not at home during a visit, a member of the team, Awine Simon, threatened to disconnect water supply if he doesn't turn up and pay his arrears which has been outstanding for just a month.

"Please, I am unable to settle my bills at the moment, but I shall be at your office to effect payment at the next convenient date within the week," the consumer pleaded with the team but his plea was rebuffed when Awine Simon ordered the supply to be disconnected immediately.

The standoff came to an abrupt end soon as a second person coughed up the money in an SOS message.

Explaining himself, the landlord of the said property complained that his business has been affected by poor patronage and low sales due to general hardship in the country blamed on hikes in prices of foodstuffs and groceries, recently.

"I normally walk to the office to pay my bills. But this month has been a very tough one for me. So I pleaded with the team from GWCL to delay the payment for next week. But they will have none of that," he made the disclosure in a conversation to this reporter.