Over 260,000 water consumers reimbursed for wrongful billing

Some 268,381 customers have been compensated by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) for wrongful billing that made them pay in excess of the water they had consumed.


According to the Communications Manager for the company, Yaw Barima Barnie, an amount of GHC2, 620,097.05 has been credited to deserving customers in the domestic category after anomalies in the billing system were rectified.

In December 2015, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC), announced an increase in utility tariffs, with a 59.2 percent increase for electricity and 67.2 percent for water.

Some consumers have however complained about being made to pay unreasonably high charges for the water they consume.

In an interview with Citi News, Mr. Barnie said the system (billing software) could not apply the two different domestic bands concurrently in the same month after the increment.

“In the December bill which took effect in January, we utilized the old tariff rates from 1st to 13th December, and the new tariff from 14th to 31st December 2015, and our billing software could not apply the two different domestic bands concurrently,” he explained.

“…So when we realized that some of our customers were overbilled, we ensured that we recomputed the December bills and the difference of the two bills have now been credited to the deserving customers in their January 2016 bills.”

A total of 268,381 customers in the domestic category; people who use water at home and not for commercial purposes, have all received their refund.

Mr. Barnie assured that all issues regarding the billing system have been rectified and customers will subsequently receive the right bills as approved by the PURC.

“We are charging exactly the rate as approved by the PURC so the January bills that came in this month (February), there is no problem whatsoever. Anyone still having issues should contact us to have them rectified.”
 Source: citifmonline.com