The Busia Water and Sewerage Company (BUWASCO) employees have closed their office to protest unpaid salary arrears, accusing the county government of Busia of payment defaults.
Speaking to the press on Thursday, the more than 80 BUWASCO staff irate workers led by Stanley Juma accused the water and Sewerage Company management of not remitting their statutory deductions.
“Salaries have been gradually delaying for the last 12 months. You can imagine its now January students are going to school and we can not take our children to.school since we have nothing, we also have needs that we need to cater for. We won’t resume until salaries are paid,” Juma said.
However, he alleged that their financial predicaments are largely catalyzed by the County Government of Busia department's failure to pay their Water bills amounting to more than Kes 13milion.
“The facility lacks basic essentials among them chemicals which is very important for water to be treated and be clean, another thing they lack is electricity since it is used to pump water continually,” he said.
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On his part, County CEC for Water, Environment and Natural Resources Eng. Andrew Messo confirmed the workers’ demands are genuine and promised to engage the BUWASCO board to solve the impasse immediately for the smooth and effective running of the company, which has had a big share of financial challenges.
“We are trying to finish up with the arreas we inherited from past few years and the issue will be sorted,” said Messo. The companies problems is dated back after devolution when the company branched from Lake Victoria water company, and ever since the payment to workers and other office equipments has remain a nightmare.”
