REPORTS that residents of Mwansekwa ward in Mbeya city are elated after obtaining a reprieve, waiving outstanding water bills that had accumulated over the years, bespeak of the hapless management of social services and the outcomes we prefer to hear.

The reprieve was learned at the launch of a new borehole water project aimed at improving water access in the area, which indicates complicated situations where water is scarce and what is available is not paid for. And it is unclear if all payments reach their destination, a situation at times seeming to be worsening with ‘tailored’ electronic fiscal devices (EFDs) programmed to obviate correct deliverance, a new sort of burden.

Just try to grasp an explanation that the decision to waive the debts followed requests from residents who explained that unpaid bills stemmed from a lack of understanding about how to use the meters installed by the regional water agency. If that was true how long is it likely to take for agency officials to go around to explain how to use the meters?  Probably not more than one month, but reports said that some households had accrued debts of up to 700,000/-, making repayment nearly out of question for such sums. How would such debts accumulate and agency officials just look at the scenario?

That is why it is overly likely that the stories about not understanding how to use the meters was just a convenient way of ‘letting sleeping dogs lie,’ that there was no reason to actually clarify what went on between agency officials and residents – and indeed, within the agency itself. In that sense the situation posed cumbersome enforcement questions if both sides were to blame, as enforcing repayment for one person, even by selling a house, is not strange but when it is an entire community that is affected, that definitely is something else. It was basically in that context that the matter was solved.

At the same time this situation illustrates how electoral politics is the dustbin into which district authorities throw all their knotty problems, when the ruling party has to make a decision to direct the local authorities to throw away such claims to avoid poisoning the campaign atmosphere. It is obvious when a ward councilor says that confusion during initial meter installation led to many residents being unaware they were accumulating bills. 

How would they pay bills they did not know, and if they did not pay how would they fail to know that they were accumulating bills? Does it suggest they thought they could pay to water officers, instead of paying at an office and obtaining a valid receipt? We run systems that breed incompetence, where service users hope they will not have to pay, and agency officials trust that at the end the matter will be resolved, yes, amicably.