The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has tak­en a de­ci­sion to grant a 92-day amnesty to al­low cus­tomers/peo­ple with il­le­gal wa­ter con­nec­tions to reg­u­larise their user sta­tus and cus­tomer billing. It takes ef­fect from Ju­ly 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30. The au­thor­i­ty, in a news re­lease yes­ter­day, said peo­ple who take ad­van­tage of the amnesty will not be sub­ject­ed to an es­ti­mat­ed $3,648 in retroac­tive charges; le­gal pro­ceed­ings/ac­tions and dis­con­nec­tion of ser­vice. It said these peo­ple will al­so be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­u­larise their ac­count sta­tus as well as to re­solve all out­stand­ing queries.

The amnesty ap­plies to peo­ple falling in any of the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories:

•Peo­ple with il­le­gal con­nec­tions, ie peo­ple who have an ex­ist­ing wa­ter ser­vice con­nec­tion but who are not

reg­is­tered as cus­tomers of the au­thor­i­ty

•Cus­tomers with un­reg­is­tered swim­ming pools, ie cus­tomers who have swim­ming pools but have not in­di­cat­ed the ex­is­tence of same to the au­thor­i­ty

•Cus­tomers who are VAT reg­is­tered, ie cus­tomers who con­duct a VAT-reg­is­tered busi­ness and are cur­rent­ly clas­si­fied as a res­i­den­tial cus­tomer

•Cus­tomers clas­si­fied as (A2) yard/build­ing tap who now have in­ter­nal plumb­ing and have failed to no­ti­fy the au­thor­i­ty

Un­der the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Act peo­ple with il­le­gal con­nec­tions, un­reg­is­tered swim­ming pools and op­er­a­tors of a VAT-reg­is­tered busi­ness, but who main­tain a sta­tus as a res­i­den­tial cus­tomer, face a one-year retroac­tive charge; and/or dis­con­nec­tion of their ser­vice, the state­ment said. WASA said those who fail to take ad­van­tage of the 92-day amnesty will face dis­con­nec­tion of their ser­vice as well as the im­po­si­tion of penal­ties and any oth­er le­gal re­course avail­able to the au­thor­i­ty.