In Burkina Faso, subscribers to the National Water and Sanitation Office are angry. For several months, they have received very high consumer bills that they still do not understand. The waterworks rejects all responsibility. However, some subscribers have received invoices of up to one million CFA francs. The government had contacted this water company to review its billing system, but the situation remains.
as reported from Ouagadougou, Yaya Boudani
Consumers’ League has met with company officials to get them back to their old billing system, that is, every month. At present, consumer dissatisfaction is increasing and they are threatening to show if nothing is done.
Unlike some subscribers, Gregoire Compaoré’s water bills have not risen significantly, but he does not yet know which one to pay.
“Before the new invoicing, as soon as I received the first invoice, I automatically knew what I had to pay next month. But with this new invoicing, I can no longer get out of it. It really creates problems “.
Burkina Faso Consumers’ League has received more than a hundred complaints from subscribers at the Water and Sanitation Office.
Dasmane Traoré, president of this league, demands that the new invoicing system be discontinued.
“We have seen people whose consumption has gone from single to triple, quadruple, even five times sometimes. And in the explanations, we understood that it was a change, but this change did not really meet consumer approval ”.
At the level of the National Agency for Water and Sanitation, the person in charge of the information system explains that the observed increase in consumption does not come from the new billing system launched a few months ago.
“It’s a statement every two months. This should not create the situations we live in today ”.
Following a meeting with the consumer league and other players in civil society, the Swedish Water Agency plans to return to monthly invoicing. “We check every two months. We take this consumption which we divide into two to make the monthly invoices, explains nosu Meda Denihou Benjamin, head of the information system for ONEA.
Will this change satisfy all parties? The coming months will tell us.
Read also: Burkina Faso: 1.9 million people in urgent need of water, according to Oxfam
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