Dr William Muhairwe’s contract as Managing Director of
National Water & Sewerage Corporation expired in November. Since then the
Corporation has advertised for applicants to the position. Contributing editor
Paul Busharizi sat down with the former boss to hear his parting words. Here
are excerpts.
Q. How do you describe the situation at NWSC at the moment?
A.
A family which has just lost its head there will be
some uncertainity. The situation at NWSC is a normal situation that happens
after an abrupt and unexpected exit of a family head. I am very happy that the
current transitional leadership is doing well. NWSC has a set of well trained
engineers, accountants and commercial officers and an able board. I think given
the circumstances they are doing a very good job. They need the support of
everyone especially our dear customers and the outside stakeholders.
Q. What was the status of NWSC when you left it?
A.
In my handover report which was received by the board
and to great extent prepared by the heads of division and departments – because
it was not Muhairwe handing over but the whole team, the status was ok. A
healthy company, consistently growing over the years from 1998 to 2011,
building up its revenues from a paltry sh21b to the current sh131b as per
audited accounts, from losses of about sh4b to an ever increasing operating
profit of oversh30b. A good cashflow with fixed deposits for any eventualities,
all these can be verified from the annual audit reports. Financially NWSC was
and still is a very strong institution.
Yes there were many challenges and
we never failed to apologise to our customers every tie we got a chance to
address them on the issues of dry zones. NWSc has become a victim of its own
success. Every person is indeed entitled or wanted to connect to the NWSC grid
its good service – the numbers grew from 50,000 household subscribers in 1998
to about 300,000 todate. Unfortunately
the facilities did not grow at the same pace. We were lucky that our
predecessors had built more capacity than we required at the time. These
capacities were exploited to cater for increasing demand. We also worked on
wastage and added revenues. We were able to reduce wastage from 50 -70% in some
towns to the current average of between 15 to 25% in towns outside Kampala and
to about 30 to 39% in Kampala. But there is a level below which you cannot keep
reducing the Non-Revenue Water, hence you need more greenfield investments.
Hence the money we had mobilized from the donors for Kampala 20m Euros to
revamp the three water works in Gaba and establish one in Mukono and Katosi and
another $150m - $200m for upgrading
upcountry stations. So given good leadership which I am sure is going to emerge
from a transparent process and a strong balance sheet NWSC will continue to
shine.
Q. Recently there have been reports that your team glossed
over the problems of NWSC and cooked the books, what do you say?
A.
This is a bit absurd. NWSC is a statutory body audited
annually b y the Auditor General. He appoints one of the big four auditing
firms – Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG or PWC to audit NWSC
books. These firms rotate every two to three years. So it’s shameful to suggest
that these big firms are being manipulated to produce wrong figures and audit.
In the last audit 2011, the AG himself wrote even gave our accounts a clean b
ill of health.
Q. How about the rosy image of NWSC that you cultivated?
A.
It is the same problem. NWSC operates in the public
domain. Either the customer has the service or they don’t and it is there for
everyone to see. Our customers and many stakeholders know what they have been
going through in the past, present and in other places. They see and compare
and can talk for themselves. So it is an insult to our dear customers to
suggest they can be manipulated to believe that the customer service of NWSC and
the overall public image can be manipulated.
Q. Why didn’t you reapply for your job that the board had
left the option open to you?
A.
I think this is what generated a lot of anxiety at the
NWSC and in some parts of the public. Looking at the number of people who have
applied especially those from within, it was very clear that we had groomed
successors who were waiting for the rain to stop and they come in so any
suggestion of a resurrection from retirement was likely to be fought and
challenged. And I was not quick to tell them that this is their time now, they
should compete for the job transparently and fairly. Hence the rumours and
anonymous documentation doing the rounds in the media, intelligence services
and parliament etc.
I had made it clear to the board and the
minister and later to the press that I was quiting.
Q. Given your experience with NWSC especially that you saved
the corporation from being flogged off, would you say 13 years later that we
have achieved a critical mass of managers to manage our own parastatals? Or is
the problem bigger than our lack of managerial capacity?
A.
I always believed that Uganda has or had a critical
mass of managerial capacity to manage its own affairs. Look at the old UDC
companies, most of them if not all of them were being managed by Ugandans and
were doing very well. My experience at NWSC confirms that if you allow a
favourable environment, you don’t interfere but give only the required
guidance, whether political or socio-economic, certainly our parastatals or
even other institutions will be properly managed. So the problem is not lack of
capacity of managers but more lack of conducive “non-interfered” with
political, social and economic environment for the managers to operate in.
