Jobs at stake, as minister warns water supply managers

By NELLY MTEMA in Dodoma

WATER project managers causing communities to suffer from lack of water on excuses of power cuts due to failure to pay power bills will cost them job losses come July 1, the Minister for Water and Irrigation, Eng. Issac Kamwelwe has warned.

The minister instructed water project managers to come up with strategies that would enable their offices pay electric bills on time. Mr Kamwelwe sounded the warning here yesterday when he was opening a two-day water stakeholders national forum to discuss various issues in the sector.

“Such excuses as lack of water supply … prompting the utility firm Tanesco to disconnect power will not be entertained any more .. so anyone facing such problems should count themselves out,” he said.

He added: “Ewura is here, you should sit down with the water project managers in councils and municipalities to work out a tariff that will meet the electricity bills” He said there was no room for people to miss water services just because of power cuts, stressing that his office won’t tolerate such excuses from next July, expressing his disappointment that the district ad municipal councils were failing to allocate the stipulated 50 per cent of their revenue collections to supporting water projects.

He said that during FY 2016/17 just 56 municipalities managed to allocate 50 per cent of their revenuecollections to the projects while under the Water Sector Development Programme (WSDP). Eng Kamwelwe said the trend was the same during FY 2017/17 f when 53 councils were above average, 131 below 50 per cent; 86 were below 20 per cent and 39 below ten per cent.

“This financial year, be warned that any municipality spending less that 50 per cent of its budget in water projects will be in trouble,” he warned. The minister said that under WSDP, the government had plans to supply water to at least 2,052 villages and that more than 19,080,000 rural communities would benefit.

Earlier, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Prof Kitila Mkumbo underscored the need for commitment and ‘value for money’ as they work on a smooth transition, which would include change of policies, rules and regulations governing the sector.