(MENAFN- The Post) MASERU – WORKERS at the Water and Sewerage Company (WASCO) are set to share a M500 000 pot after they successfully collected debts for the 2022/23 financial year, thepost can reveal.
This is despite the fact that WASCO had its own power supply cut twice in the last six months because it owes the Lesotho Electricity Company (LEC) tens of millions of maloti in outstanding bills.
In a leaked internal memo titled Staff Incentives, the wholly state-owned company said in August last year it embarked on a massive debt collection campaign for delinquent customers.
“This exercise resulted in collection that is beyond the moving average for the month of August for the past five (5) years,” the memo reads.
It says a request was made to the board of directors to approve a certain amount of the surplus from the August debt collection campaign so that it could be awarded to employees.
The board, the memo says, approved M500 000“to be awarded to the employees as incentive for good performance”.
The incentive was to be distributed at the end of the financial year, which is the end of March this year.
WASCO boss, Thelejane Thelejane, the chairman of the board Lisema Lekhooana, and Water Minister Mohlomi Moleko were not reachable for comment amid concerns that paying bonuses under these condition did not make business sense.
The company's spokesperson, Lineo Moqasa, said decisions of the board are beyond her and she could not therefore respond to thepost's questions.
“I can only respond to questions involving the daily operations of the company. As for the decisions of the board, those ones should be directed to my superiors,” Moqasa said.
She however said the memo was meant for the staff only and it was wrong that it had been leaked to the public.
She also said the money has not been distributed to the staff and“I can only talk about the money when it has reflected in our bank accounts as members of staff”.
Two weeks ago LEC cut power to WASCO that saw it failing to pump water at its various stations countrywide.
Several towns spent at least two days without water until the parliamentary Natural Resources Cluster intervened by calling the bosses of the two state-owned companies for talks.
It is claimed that WASCO could be owing LEC at least over M20 million.
About six month ago several areas in Maseru city had no running water after the LEC cut power at the Metolong hydro-power station, which also supplies Teya-Teyaneng, Roma, and Morija with water.
The then Water Minister Kemiso Mosenene told thepost that the two state-owned companies had a quarrel over how much WASCO owed LEC.
“WASCO says it owes the LEC M26 million but LEC insists that it is owed M38 million,” Mosenene said.
WASCO asked the Lesotho Water and Electricity Authority (LEWA) to hike tariffs by 15 per cent for the 2022/23 financial year.
However the authority increased the water volumetric tariffs by only 5.67 per cent and the standing charges by 9.17 per cent.
Staff Reporter