Lesotho Water and Sewerage Company (WASCO) in undergoing change management. The initiative which commenced in 2021 is under the Lesotho Lowlands Water Development Project Phase II (LLWDPII) Component III financed by the World Bank. The component had three activities namely, Change Management Initiatives, Reduction of Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and Financial and Technical Data Improvement (FinTech).
The focus of Change Management initiatives is to facilitate institutional performance improvement of WASCO and it was implemented through five identified change priorities and/or initiatives namely, Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Organizational Culture Change, Non-Revenue Water, Financial and Technical Data Improvement, Performance Management System and Strategy review, execution, and evaluation.
The Company embarked on the initiative to support sustainability of projects, strategic initiatives, and overall efficiency of Company operations.
Currently the Company has transited to cashless environment, and a lot of improvement has been envisaged on Global Positioning System (GPS) and EDAMS applications under business process re-engineering and working on to ensure paperless communication with customers in the long run.
One of the challenges that the Company is facing is Non-Revenue Water (NRW). To curb NRW challenges a unit has been established to ensure computation of NRW for all 16 Urban Centres in line with International Water Association practices, areas of water losses within WASCO and identification of initiatives required for successful implementation of NRW.
To this point, WASCO has achieved the following: adoption of International Water Association’s water balance calculation standard, improvement of water supply system performance monitoring and diagnosis, improved infrastructural asset management on GIS, improvement of meter reading performance efficiency, reduction of unauthorised consumptions – illegal connections, Reduction of NRW to 43% (as at quarter 4 of 2023-24)
Under the initiative the Company is undergoing culture change which include behavior and attitudes changes. A strategy was developed to guide the implementation of this priority. and currently in the process of developing a Decentralization and Professionalization Strategy, aimed at improving increased performance of WASCO district.
To ensure the Company’s financial and technical data improvement (FIN-TECH) the Consultants team led by Mr Leonard has been on -site to undertake the second audit that shall cover the progress made by WASCO in implementing the improvement Plan report recommendations for the year 2023-2024.
WASCO has adopted the Bua-le-‘Na slogan to encourage communication across the enterprise, create awareness on the importance of the change initiatives being intended in WASCO within each of the identified change priority, thereby influencing change attitudes. The goal of the communication is to persuade recipients to accept a change. It is through this initiative that the Company expected to improve performance in its operations.
