Bridgetown.
Customers are being overcharged by the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) because of the way they are calculating their bills, says investigations officer in the office of Public Counsel, Romel Crawford.
According to Crawford, some of consumers are being overcharged by $100 or more. Under Barbados Water Authority and Sewerage Rates Regulations, consumers are to pay the BWA for water supplied by measured cubic metres per month.
Therefore the BWA should not bill customers for water measured for a 34 day period as is currently being done.
Customers should only be billed for a 30 or a 31 day period, according to the particular month, 28 days for February and 29 if it is a leap year.
As a result of billing customers for a 34 day period, some customers went into into the higher usage rate section and paid more. Instead of paying $4.66 per cubic metres for using between 21 and 40 cubic metres per month as many household do, they ended up being charged $7.78 per cubic metres per month.
"This is what happen to a number of people last night month.We recognized that people were complaining about having billing days of 34 days. It happened before and we wrote to the BWA to explain that if they go over 40 cubic metres that one cubic metre could end up with a person paying more. So that extra three days can cause some customers to be billed for $100 or more", Crawford explained.
