The Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Water Board, says it will commence online billing for customers in 2022.
The Acting General Manager, Princess Joy Okoro made the disclosure during an interacting section with Journalists in Abuja Nigeria’s capital.
According to her, online billing amongst other measures will help to achieve the monthly N500 million revenue target by next year.
“The revenue performance of the Board had improved significantly with the months of March 2021, July 2021, September & October 2021 recording unprecedented, improved percentages of 41%, 19.49%, 66% and 23% respectfully.
“Notably, prior to my appointment, the best performance was March 2020 with a performance of N122,729,926.75 from 7395 transactions. The months of March, July, September and October 2021 have not just recorded higher figures but also higher transaction volumes, a direct consequence of my philosophy of encouraging Customers to pay water bills.”
The Acting General Manager disclosed that prior to her appointment last year October, the FCT Water Board generated little above N100 million adding that it now rakes in over N200 million monthly as revenue.
Speaking further, she disclosed the Boards plan to install solar in all its facilities to ensure timely printing of bills for customers.
Okoro said that in 2021, the board recorded an unprecedented improvement in areas such as; improved revenue, increased transaction volume reservoir and production department reservoir.
“We have a target of N400 million to N450 million monthly. I think we’ll get there and you rightly know that we already have an act which was approved and assented since 2017.
“It has not been easy to implement absolutely. By having that act, we are supposed to be autonomous and to be autonomous, we have to be both financially and otherwise.
“It has not been possible. Why? Because we have not be able to reach our target to be able to have everything within us but we are working towards that and I believe by next year, the autonomy will be achieved.”
While noting that the Board currently has 54,000 customers in its database, Princess Okoro explained that steps have been taken to update the database which could be said to be obsolete as it was prepared 25 years ago.
She said that it became imperative to update the database as most of the houses captured then may no longer be in existence.
“We have even gone further because we have a database that was created 25 years ago. You would appreciate the fact that some of the data (houses), are no more in existence or the house owners are no more there.
“We have taken cognizance of that. So we will start the enumeration from next year. We want to enumerate all our customers from next year to be able to get an accurate database.
“Presently, we have 54,000 customers on our database. Within that 54,000, some of those properties are no more in place. So we want to do enumeration which we have started.” She added.
PIAK
