A damning new performance audit from Jamaica’s Auditor General has laid bare widespread, systemic shortcomings in the National Water Commission (NWC)’s management of capital water and sewerage infrastructure projects, failures that the audit directly links to the persistent poor service that millions of Jamaican consumers endure daily.
Tabled in Jamaica’s Parliament on Tuesday, the audit evaluated the NWC’s capital budget and project delivery practices across the five-year period from the 2019/2020 to 2023/2024 financial years, finding critical gaps spanning project prioritization, contract administration, financial governance, and internal reporting.
Over the review period, the NWC had allocated a total of JMD 44.92 billion for critical water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades, yet the audit confirmed the agency missed its mandatory spending targets in four out of the five years assessed. Capital budget allocations peaked at JMD 12.1 billion in 2020/21 before declining in subsequent years, and with the exception of the 2019/20 financial cycle, actual spending consistently fell far short of planned budgets. The end result? Long delays to upgrades designed to fix crumbling infrastructure and improve service reliability for Jamaican households.
“Across the review period, NWC delivered substantially less capital work than its budgets called for, with implications for water and wastewater service reliability,” the Auditor General wrote in the official report. “If you have experienced low water pressure, irregular water supply, or unreliable sewerage services, the weaknesses found in this audit help explain why.”
Beyond under-spending, the audit uncovered deep flaws in how the NWC selects which projects receive limited funding. The commission failed to consistently document the rationale behind funding decisions, and could not prove that a standardized, organization-wide prioritization framework was ever used to allocate resources. This lack of transparency and structure means the NWC cannot confirm that funding is directed to projects that address the most pressing operational needs or deliver the greatest improvements to customer service.
Project implementation delays are also endemic across the agency’s portfolio. A sampling of 50 active NWC contracts found that 29 of them suffered delays ranging from three to 29 months. The audit traced these delays to a host of preventable issues: consistent underperformance by contracted firms, unresolved land acquisition disputes, delayed regulatory approvals, unaddressed funding gaps, and a lack of adequate pre-implementation preparation that leaves projects unready to break ground even after approval. Alarmingly, the NWC also rarely takes enforcement action against contractors that fail to meet contracted deadlines, removing a key check on poor performance.
Financial management weaknesses further undermine the NWC’s ability to deliver on its infrastructure promises. The audit found that capital budget projections are often based on overly optimistic revenue forecasts that never materialize, creating systemic funding shortfalls that halt or slow projects mid-execution. Over the review period, the NWC’s own accounts payable (unpaid bills to contractors and suppliers) grew dramatically, while incoming revenue owed to the commission failed to keep pace with its expanding financial obligations.
The audit also called out a botched multi-million dollar investment in a new financial management system. The NWC spent roughly US$3.6 million to roll out a new Financial Information Management System, intended to streamline financial reporting, procurement, inventory tracking, and operational oversight, but several core modules of the system never worked as designed. To fix the existing defects, the NWC was forced to hire a second contractor at an additional cost of roughly US$198,000, wasting public funds on a remedial fix that could have been avoided with stronger upfront oversight.
Compounding these governance failures, the NWC has failed to submit audited annual financial statements and annual public reports for four consecutive financial years, spanning 2021/22 through 2024/25. The audit also found that reports provided to the NWC’s governing board and the relevant government portfolio ministry regularly omit critical information, failing to clearly explain project delays, unexpected cost overruns, or unapproved changes to project scope.
In response to the full set of findings, the Auditor General has issued a series of targeted recommendations to address the systemic gaps. Key recommendations include rolling out a formal, mandatory organization-wide project prioritization framework, implementing more rigorous pre-implementation project readiness assessments, strengthening contract enforcement against underperforming contractors, improving capital project monitoring and public reporting, upgrading revenue and spending forecasting processes, and taking immediate steps to resolve the backlog of unsubmitted audited financial statements and annual reports.
The audit also recommends tightening oversight of large IT investments, requiring that all system functionality is tested and confirmed to be working correctly before final payments are disbursed to vendors.
Crucially, the audit underscores the urgent need for reform, noting that roughly 70 percent of the NWC’s existing national water and sewerage infrastructure is more than 40 years old. Aging, outdated infrastructure makes timely, effective capital planning and project delivery all the more critical to ensuring reliable water and sanitation services for communities across Jamaica.