COMPLAINTS HANDLING PROCEDURE

Northern Water Works Development Agency is a registered parastatal under the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation in Kenya whose mission is enhance effectively coordinated provision of affordable and accessible safe water and sanitation services in NWWDA region.

To achieve its mandate, NWWDA is improving its Service Delivery by incorporating a responsive mechanism for efficiency and increased access to information.

Subsequently, this can only be done through learning to value the complaints made by customers. Customer complaints challenge the way things are done within an organization pushing it to the next level of service delivery.

Definition

1. Complainant: A person, group of persons, organization or institution making a complaint.
2. Complaint Channel: A medium through which a complaint is transmitted to its intended organization.
3. Complaint issue: The subject matter of the complaint e.g, delay, inefficiency, abuse of power among others.
4. Complaint: An expression of dissatisfaction by a person, group, institution or organization about an unsatisfactory or unacceptable situation, including an act or omission or about the standard of service.
5. Complaints handling procedures: the steps a complaint goes through in an institution from receipt to the day it is resolved.
6. Corrective Action: The improvement to an institution’s processes or system taken to eliminate causes of complaints or other undesirable situations. Further proactive actions may be taken to determine potential risks before they could occur and to ensure that they do not happen.

The Agency’s Complaint Handling Procedures

 Step 1. Any NWWDA Officer receiving a complaint/compliment either oral or written shall record the details in the Agency’s complaints register.

 Step 2. If the complaint is straightforward, the receiving officer shall resolve the complaint immediately and update the complaint register.

 Step 3. If the complaint is complex the receiving officer’s mandate shall be forwarded to the immediate supervisor for further inquiries and resolution guided by the Service Charter. If the complaint is not resolved, it shall be forwarded for additional action.

 Step 4. The Human Resources Manager will then communicate the action to the complaint and update records. If the complainant is not satisfied, the case shall be transferred to the Chief Executive Officer for further action as necessary and records updated.

 Step 5. All Managers should forward any formal and informal complaints logged through their divisions to the Human Resources Manager quarterly for analysis and CAJ quarterly report.

 Step 6. All the complaints and compliments will be forwarded to the Complaints Handling Committee before the quarterly meetings.

 Step 7. The Complaints Handling Committee shall be expected to prepare a report including the following details as per the CAJ complaints handling reporting template:

>Date the complaint was received

>Complaint channel

>Name of the complainant

>Complaint issue

>Action taken root cause

>Corrective action to resolve the complaint

>Status – this should state if the complaint is:

Resolved
On-going
New

>Pending complaints from the previous quarter (resolved, ongoing)