As water theft continued to be a major concern, National Water and Sewerage Corporation sought a solution to push for the complete halt of this vice and a task force came to mind. Starting with one Area at a time, Kampala Water’s “Water Loss Prevention Unit (WALOPU)”, was launched in August 2015.
The inaugural water loss prevention task force, WALOPU has since it’s conception become a real asset to the corporation.
As a mechanism that NWSC in partnership with Uganda Police derived to halt illegal water usage and nab the culprits involved in the various illegal water usage practices, WALOPU has registered extraordinary success in curbing down water theft that way saving the corporation billions with over 30 arrests weekly from various branches affiliated to Kampala Water.
Armed with a Shs23B monthly income, National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) has struggled with illegal water use, a depravity that has cost one of Africa’s finest over 60million shillings in water loss monthly, until the conception of the “Water Loss Prevention Unit WALOPU).
Having deployed the WALOPU squads, NWSC stepped up its operations against illegal water connections recovering more than Shs2.26Billion in the first seven months of operation from fines resulting from illegal connections and defaulters, among others.
For the initiative to work the squads had to develop tactics of Identifying Illegal Water use, some of which include; Information on suspected illegal water use, consumption trends from the billing system thus drop in sales and zero consumption, dynamics and changing times of operations: day and night operations. and early morning raids too.
Proactive undertaking by WALOPU teams, Branch teams, Operatives and Informers and finally, sweep or comb action for particular areas.
Behind the achievements lay challenges that attempted to hinder the squad’s operations for instance; hostile and non-responsive customers, customers who have failed to honor the agreements, Increase in appeal/review cases, Hostile customers, Surface pipelines with exposed fittings, Surface pipelines with exposed fittings, repeated prepaid meter and fire hydrant abuse by police.
Notably, Kampala Water had and has always been fighting illegal water use through “Wet storm and wet storm2”, programs that had been made a number of achievements like; arrests and possible prosecution, fines. However, these were not utterly effective that is why the external officers were brought into plan. These officers have up to date investigative skills and provide professional police support and are bound to compel change in the attitude of the customers against water theft and illegal use.
WALOPU’s success story was one to derive inspiration from as other NWSC Area offices took on the task to join the fight and create their own squads in threspective areas for instance, RESAIL (Entebbe), PICEP (Bushenyi), PURGE (Mbale), REAMS (Lugazi), NAS (Nebbi), ARISE (Iganga), LINSAR (Lira) and SNARP (Jinja),
