By Ramatoulie Jawo
The board and management of the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC), on Wednesday, October 11, 2023, made an appearance before the Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) of the National Assembly to present their activity and financial reports for the fiscal year ending on December 31, 2020.
During the presentation, Nani Juwara, the Managing Director of NAWEC, addressed the committee and highlighted that the persistent challenges in transmission and distribution have remained a significant issue for the company.
“The network is really old, and we are making efforts but in 2020 not much effort has been made for the fact that we were hoping that some of these project would have kicked in 2020, but unfortunately the contracts of those projects were not signed at the time,” he said.Mr. Jawara stated that the majority of NAWEC’s activities in 2020 were funded by the company’s own budget. He said that they had rehabilitated the network by replacing some contractors and installing new transformers in areas experiencing low voltage due to increased demand. He noted that these measures had helped to reduce technical losses.
“As part of our law enforcement efforts, we have also constituted a team responsible for going after people who tamper with our electricity or water meters those who do illegal connections that activity has been on as we speak
“In 2020, NAWEC is still faced with a lot of challenges when it comes to water supply meeting the demand of our customers. It has not changed significantly since 2020. I think the situation still remains until today or even worse as a result of the level of urbanization that we all experiencing,” he told the committee.
He said the rapid population growth in the Greater Banjul Area is causing significant delays in water supply service delivery.
“The main supply in 2020 was the signing and the implementation of India line up credit, which is a 22.5 million dollar project. This project gave birth to drilling of new boreholes and those boreholes are in operation and the project is commissioned,” he said.
He informed the committee that, concerning governance, the NAWEC board in 2021 successfully endorsed the new organizational framework for NAWEC, with 2020 being a pivotal year in NAWEC’s transformation agenda. He conveyed that the board of directors sanctioned an updated structure for NAWEC, enabling them to bring in fresh group directors. This structure has undergone continuous evolution, particularly since 2020, when it initially consisted of approximately nine directorates.
“It has not been easy, but the management has put a lot of effort to make sure we meet the minimum expectations, because 24 hours was really a bit of challenge for us to provide 24 hours electricity supply but relatively most places were enjoying good supplies from 2020 and in terms of providing access to the people of Kiang were also very happy in 2020 for the first time they had access to electricity through the support we get from Indian line credit,” he stated.