Georgetown: Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) has achieved positive results from its country-wide customer outreach programme, ‘GWI’s Community Connect’.
Recently the utility conducted the exercise in the community of Cane Grove, Mahaica offering customers, who are unable to travel to the local GWI office at Bachelor’s Adventure, the opportunity to make water service payments, query outstanding bills, report leaks and apply for new service connections. In excess of 400 customers visited the GWI Community Connect booth stationed within the local NDC office with the majority making payments towards their service charges.
GWI’s Chief Executive, Shaik Baksh noted that he is encouraged by the response at Cane Grove. ‘Community Connect is vital to our current country-wide revenue drive so we are relieved that customers are making use of our outreach activities to resolve billing queries and honor their service charges,’ stated the Chief Executive, ‘our aim is to provide customers with a wide range of options for bill payment. In addition to customer services locations and payment vendors such as Surepay, customers in rural areas like Cane Grove are encouraged to utilize Community Connect to ensure their payments are received on time’.
A similar outreach activity was conducted earlier in August in the Bareroot Community, East Coast Demerara with in excess of 300 GWI customers in attendance. This activity also received positive feedback from customers who indicated that it was convenient to have GWI officials in the community to address complaints and queries from customers.
During these outreach activities, GWI customer service representatives also conducted door-to-door visits reminding customers about overdue bill payments and querying about the quality of their service. ‘Our objective is to avoid disconnecting any customer’s service for non-payment,’ stated Chief Executive Shaik Baksh, ‘we are reaching out to as many customers as possible in areas where revenue collection is low to ensure customers have the opportunity to make payments and avoid service disconnection’.
The Chief Executive urged customers, especially in rural areas, to attend all future community connect activities which are scheduled for East Bank Demerara, Berbice, West Coast Demerara and Linden. Customers attending will have access to all the services available at GWI customer services locations as Community Connect is intended to function as a mobile GWI office providing customers with added convenience.
The utility’s country-wide disconnection campaign continues indefinitely as customers with any outstanding arrears are urged to make payments to avoid service disconnection. The campaign also targets customers with illegal connections and those who reconnect their service after disconnection. GWI has commenced removing the entire service connection of repeat offenders who have consistently reconnected their service connections. Customers with large arrears can access ‘GWI’s Wallet-Friendly Payment Plans’ at Community Connect events. For information on new dates for Community Connect customers can call 227-8701/03/04 or e-mail pro@gwi.gy Dates and locations will also be posted via gwiguyana.com and the company’s Facebook fan-page available at www.facebook.com/everydropcountsgy
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