OUR grants three-month suspension of two NWC guaranteed standards

The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has granted permission for the National Water Commission (NWC) to suspend for three months, two guaranteed standards pertaining to meter installation and meter repair or replacement.

The two guaranteed standards are WGS7, which states that the NWC should install a meter on a customer’s request within 30 days; and WGS8, which holds the NWC to a maximum of 20 working days to verify, repair, or replace a meter after being notified of a defect.

The suspension of these two standards takes effect on April 15 this year and will end on July 15.

The OUR has asked the NWC to ensure that its customers are adequately notified of the suspension prior to the effective date.

In a letter to the OUR on March 26, 2019, the NWC said that the request was being made because of delays in the scheduling of meter-testing dates with the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ). The NWC said that these delays have impacted the implementation of its meter procurement as well as its testing and deployment schedule and affected its ability to adequately comply with the requirements of these guaranteed standards.

The OUR, in granting its permission, said that the BSJ had notified the regulator in January 2018 that its water meter testing facilities had been taken out of service to facilitate renovation and upgrade works in order to satisfy the requirements of the meter-testing administrative and operational protocol, 2017 (the Protocol). This caused delays in conducting the water meter testing necessary to inform the authorisation process for meter installations.

The OUR has also implored the NWC to fast-track the process to obtain accreditation for its water meter testing facilities as stipulated in the protocol as this would assist in mitigating some of the reported effects of the BSJ’s delay. The NWC’s meter-testing facilities should have received accreditation by October 17, 2018, but this was not achieved. The OUR has extended the deadline for accreditation to May 31, 2019, and has urged the NWC to urgently put the required resources in place to ensure that accreditation is achieved within the revised timeline.