New water charges announced in Dominica

Effective June 1, 2024, consumers in Dominica will pay a new water guarantee charge which was announced by the Dominica Water and Sewerage Company Limited (DOWASCO) as the company struggles with financial difficulties.  

The Water Access Charge is broken down as follows: 

Domestic Customer – $15 per month 

Small Businesses – $100 per month 

Medium Commercial Businesses – $175 per month 

Large Commercial Businesses – $800 per month. 

DOWASCO is 100 per cent owned by the Government of Dominica. 

Explaining why the increases are necessary during a media conference today, Chairman of the Board of DOWASCO, Louis Patrick Hill, says DOWASCO has found itself in a position where it needs revenue and additional resources to manage the company in order to provide water to all residents of Dominica.  

He notes there were several serious setbacks over the last few years, where Tropical Storm Erika and Hurricane Maria did significant damage to Dominica’s water infrastructure, which required a lot of money to repair and buy new equipment, which was then followed by the advent of COVID-19.  

Hill says at this point the revenues of the company cannot meet its expenditure on a monthly and annual basis.  

“For the last three years we have been way under budget. So what has happened? We have a very low stock of supplies. If we have a hurricane this season… if we don’t replenish, we’ll have serious problems, because we will not have the parts on hand, so that we can simply go to the storeroom pick them up and repair the systems like we did after after Maria and after Erika.”  

The Chairman says another issue is the employees like other state employees, require pay increases, uniforms and other things needed to effectively do their job.  

“This rate increase is not something we have just decided overnight that DOWASCO needs a rate increase… so let’s just raise the rates on water. This is something we have been struggling with and contemplating for the last three years. The company has been really having significant financial difficulties.”  

Hill in a direct message to customers, says DOWASCO understands it’s going to create some difficulty financially, but the company has tried its best in collaboration with the government to keep the increase to a bare minimum.  

“We are not making a profit. We are not trying to put a lot of money into the bank. We simply need to meet the cost of running the business. If we do not meet the cost of running the business then at the end of the day it is the consumer who is going to suffer, because we will not be able to respond to emergencies when equipment fails, we will not be able to replace it. When pipes break, we won’t be able to fix them, and our employees will be unhappy and the entire country will be unhappy.” 

The Chairman says if at the end of the day the rate increases generates a certain amount of revenue that allows the company to meet all of its expenditures and to cover all of its costs, and if there is some revenue left over, he says that will either go back into some sort of emergency fund that the Prime Minister has actually required of the company, or into the expense of additional equipment and pipes.

In addition, Hill notes if the company has more revenues than it requires for its operation, then just as it asked for a rate increase, it will ask for a rate decrease.  

Meanwhile, General Manager of DOWASCO, Bernard Etinoffe, agreed that over the years the company has been facing challenges, noting there has been no rate increase or change over the past 13 years.  

He says what is being implemented now is a water guarantee charge where the rates remain the same, and there will be no increase in the basic tariff for water or for sewerage services. What the government has done is approve a guarantee charge for everybody, with the customer base broken down into various sections. Domestic customers will incur the smallest increase. 

The General Manager says the collection of this charge will allow DOWASCO to meet all its loan payments and payments to its local, regional and international suppliers. 

It will also allow for DOWASCO to take out insurance for its major assets which remain uninsured at this time.