Outgoing WSD Director praised for $5M revenue increase in 2 years
Hon Vanterpool made it clear he was the one who in 2012 asked soon to be transferred Director of the Water and Sewerage Department Mrs Perline Scatliffe-Leonard to work with the department to assist with the collection of hundreds of thousands of dollars that were owed to the department.
“At that time, she was the Human Resources Director in the department,” the Minister said yesterday, September 15, 2016 as he responded to questions from members of the media while on an extensive site tour of the British Virgin Islands Electricity Cooperation’s (BVIEC) operations at Pockwood Pond, Tortola.
“She went there, we were in the low, below probably million/two million dollars in collections. In the first year or two after that we got it up to about, I think we got it up to a point where it got to six or seven million dollars and we want to be able to get back to that point and rebuild it on the collection side,” the responsible Minister stated.
On July 23, 2013 Hon Vanterpool had told reporters at a press briefing that the paying of sewerage bills by customers had been a tardy exercise and had resulted in the Water and Sewerage Department (W&SD) being owed in excess of $1.7M and that the department was taking stringent actions to have those monies collected.
On that very occasion Scatliffe-Leonard had also elaborated on the situation saying that the arrears had dated back as far as 2005. At that time, she said they had managed to work at reducing the extent of arrears mainly in the commercial sector. She had also stated that in many cases persons were not aware they were required to pay a sewerage bill.
Time for an engineer
“I want to commend her for the good work she did. I am one who believe that, as an individual, we want to look for their strengths and utilise their strengths. We’ve done that [and] we want to now let her assist in the Ministry with some other things and move on with our engineers who would work on a lot of the technical things to improve water distribution, that’s our biggest thing right now.”
Billing and metering were highlighted as two of the areas that the department has major issues with. “Some of them are technical in nature, not so much administrative, so we are moving towards improving the meters to new modern meters. Meters that can be read without physically being there and some other things we are doing,” said Hon Vanterpool.
Not satisfied
The Minister said that of several things his ministry is working on is the delivery of an effective and timely water supply. “The next thing we are working on and we are making some major changes over the next three to six months to arrest the situation with water and none of us are pleased with the water situation in the territory. We want to be able to provide water more consistently to all areas in the territory.”
“This area in the Sea Cows Bay, as you always hear from the Leader of the Opposition and the Member for the Third (Third District) that he is unsatisfied and I cannot blame him, I am not satisfied either so we are trying our best to make some major changes to upgrade and get more water consistently throughout the territory.”
Hon Vanterpool said his technicians are doing a good job in that regard thus far but they are also major concerns about the amount of water that is lost and, according to Hon Vanterpool, a special team is being appointed to look at that situation over the next few months.
“And we want to be able to say in the next year or so that we have reduced the water losses significantly to be able to better manage our financial side of that as well as the billing and the other things that we are going to be working on at the Water and Sewerage Department.’
According to Hon Vanterpool, there are other areas that his Ministry is working on but, while he was not prepared to elaborate on those yesterday, he described the work being done as very ‘robust’.
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13 Responses to “Outgoing WSD Director praised for $5M revenue increase in 2 years”
Is the the Mark Vanterpool, MCW, saying that the Water and Sewage Department was on a single track and focus during this period? Did the technical needs of the department suffer immensely during this period? Why was not the infrastructure put in place to facilitate the delivery of water produced by BI-Water? Have not heard anything about Bi-Water lately. Is all well with BI-Water now that ownership changed? Is it still "Bruck Down"? What is the lost rate from the water system? Do technicians working on water lines.......etc have to be certified? Under what standards is the water and sewage system being operated ? How are water quality standards being monitored, tested, and measured ? What are the procedures when water quality deviate from standards? Are boil notices ever issued? Should not an engineer have been hired in the first place and the expectations set to effectively carry out the administrative, operational and technical requirements?
Mark u need to stop hurting people life u have three engineer employ at w&s u also have a colsulant engineer working along with w&s Mr KS who mess up the whole water system from bad to worst or is that wss mark and the PS plans to make the department look bad mark tell the people the truth water &sewerage is merging with Bvi elecelictric that mark whole plan