Irresponsible littering causes sewerage system to clog up in Lautoka

The Water Authority of Fiji has once again raised concerns regarding rubbish being dumped irresponsibly and causing pipes to block as they found plastic bottles clogging up the sewerage system in Lautoka causing a manhole to overflow.

WAF says their ground teams in response to the complaints of the residents, cleared the blockage, which also included grass, and flushed the system.

Authority CEO Barry Omundson says this is an ongoing issue that they are having to deal with, despite continual reminders, and says they need those who are throwing their rubbish wherever they please, to stop.

He says in this case the residents went to the media to complain about the issue on the basis that it was caused by the Water Authority of Fiji when in fact the real cause was the other residents dumping their rubbish into the sewer systems which resulted in disruptions to other residents and environmental damage.

The CEO says they have put in a lot of time and manpower to fix these issues which could have been avoided had people disposed of their rubbish properly in the first place and these resources could have been better allocated for other projects and upgrades.

The Authority says they use a complaints management and performance measurement tool called Gentrack to follow up on complaints and in the case of wastewater overflows, a dedicated team is sent in.