The coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency orders have impacted the Water and Sewerage Corporation’s (WSC) coffers, especially after Abaco – the company’s second highest earner – was devastated by Hurricane Dorian last year, WSC’s Executive Chairman Adrian Gibson told Guardian Business yesterday. He revealed that the corporation was hit with a 41 percent decrease in collections in the first quarter of this year, compared to 2019, representing a $7 million shortfall in revenue.
Gibson added that WSC is already seeing a decrease in collections of 50 percent for April. He said the corporation typically brings in $4 million per month.
With Abaco essentially out of the corporation’s revenue pool, Gibson said the public water provider has been severely set back.
To paint a clearer picture, he explained that in the first quarter of 2019, WSC collected about $1 million from Abaco users. For the same period this year, only $57,000 was collected.
According to Gibson, Hurricane Dorian’s destruction along with the deferral of bill paying by customers and the cessation of disconnections due to the coronavirus, have created a cashflow problem.
“You can see the great fall-off,” said Gibson. “These funds are very much needed to sustain the operation. Without these funds, the operation is facing severe challenges. We, too, must meet payroll and water purchases and various other vendor agreement obligations that we are seeking to maintain.
“We had a hurricane in Abaco, our second largest revenue base, and that caused severe challenges for us.”
Gibson appealed to those who have the means to continue paying their water and sewerage bills, either through the corporation’s app or its website, to continue to do so. Additionally, he said the office is open, though beholden to social distancing rules.
In March of this year, when the government’s emergency orders came into effect, WSC saw a $1.78 million drop in revenue, or a 38 percent decrease, compared to March 2019, Gibson said.
He added that the figure did not include the government’s payments to the corporation.
Gibson said he and WSC executives continue to look for cost savings for the corporation. He said contracts with reverse osmosis (RO) providers continue to be scrutinized, with the hope of bringing those operations in-house.
“We have RO engineers, we have recruited technical folks who deal with RO plants. So, these persons are now on staff and there’s absolutely no reason why WSC can’t run some of these operations and reduce that multimillion-dollar bill that we have to pay every year,” Gibson said.
“If you see a reduction in that bill, the operation becomes more efficient and the corporation will have a little more breathing room to do some other things, capital works and so on.”
The post COVID-19, Dorian impact WSC’s first-quarter revenue appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-dorian-impact-wscs-first-quarter-revenue/
No comments:
Post a Comment