• More than half its water never reaches end-users

• Losses up 59% in 3 years; -306% operating income

• Staffing and wage bill ‘increased sharply’ since 2019’

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

More than half the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s supply to Family Island customers never reaches the end-user, it has been revealed, resulting in a negative 306 percent operating loss margin.

An Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) document, obtained by Tribune Business, disclosed that the state-owned utility’s non-revenue water (NRW) losses in the Family Islands were equal to 55 percent of the water piped through its infrastructure.

This means more than half the supply is lost from the network, due to leaks, theft and other defects, before it reaches paying customers, and the IDB paper disclosed that these losses have increased by 59 percent - or one million gallons per day - over the three-year period between 2019 and 2022.

This, the document added, was a critical factor driving the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s near-$19m Family Islands operating loss in 2022. With the state-owned utility’s operating costs also rising, due to an increasing reliance on buying more expensive reverse osmosis water from private suppliers, the IDB said this - combined with NRW losses and below-cost tariffs - drove the 306 percent operating loss margin.

Robert Deal, the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s general manager, in e-mailed replies to Tribune Business questions, said the IDB’s $150,000 financing and consultancy will “jumpstart... urgent operational improvements” in the Family Islands by identifying the extent of the non-revenue water losses outside New Providence and developing a plan to address these woes.

With reverse osmosis water purchases, the largest expense line item in the Water & Sewerage Corporation’s budget, forecast at a total $42m in 2023, Mr Deal acknowledged it was vital to plug leaks and other system losses in order to boost efficiency and keep expenditure under control.

With the IDB’s assistance, he signalled that the Water & Sewerage Corporation is seeking to replicate in the Family Islands what has been accomplished in New Providence, where its decade-plus partnership with third-party contractor, Miya Bahamas, has significantly slashed non-revenue water losses in the capital.

“In the Family Islands, the Water & Sewerage Corporation has determined that we need a structured NRW programme, similar to New Providence, to substantially improve the efficiency of our operations,” Mr Deal told this newspaper.

“The demand for costly desalinated water, as compared to historically lower cost groundwater supplies, has steadily increased over the years, and now almost 50 percent