Susana Martínez Ochoa, Aquara Operations Manager in Alcañiz explains how they have guaranteed the health of employees, customers and the supply of drinking water, as well as promoting remote assistance more than ever.

Ensuring access to drinking and quality water in Alcañiz homes and companies and maintaining customer service has been Aquara's task during the year and peak of the pandemic that we continue to suffer.

The company faced a challenge with the coronavirus emergency. Aquara is entrusted in Alcañiz with the surveillance, control and maintenance of the facilities for the collection, storage and pumping of drinking water from the Guadalope River, as well as the surveillance and maneuvering of the general pipes and distribution networks and the search, location and repair of leaks. and leaks.

To this he adds the attention to the subscribers in matters such as registrations and cancellations and the installation, conservation and reading of meters. Altogether, Aquara serves the needs of 16,000 residents of Alcañiz, including the districts of Valmuel and Puigmoreno.

"With the declaration of the state of alarm in March 2020, we set ourselves as the first objective to take care of the health of our employees, that of our customers and guarantee the supply of drinking water, which was more necessary than ever for all citizens," he explains Susana Martínez Ochoa, head of Aquara in the Teruel town. It was a great challenge that has led to multiplying efforts to enhance the service and bring quality water to residents, companies and businesses in Alcañiz.

“At the beginning of the confinement, we announced the closure of all the face-to-face care offices, since contagion in them could cause the paralysis of a service as essential as the water supply, since the workers are concentrated there. For this reason, isolating them, protecting them with the necessary PPE and establishing the appropriate operating procedures allowed the service to be maintained without incident and that no employee was affected, ”explains Martínez Ochoa.

But the closing of offices should not suppose to relax the attention to the citizen. To guarantee it, efforts were redoubled to maintain and even improve the level of attention to neighborhood needs. For this reason, the service systems were strengthened, via web, mail, mobile and SMS.

"In 2020, the remote service channels and the prior telephone appointment allowed us to attend 5,829 contacts with customers, which represents an average of 21 daily," explains the person in charge of Aquara in Alcañiz.

Among the services implemented by Aquara to facilitate the care of Alcañiz subscribers during the pandemic is the servialerta system. In this time, 12,525 free messages have been sent to mobile phones (sms) and emails, giving information of interest to neighbors about the service and its incidents.

There were, for example, 292 notices of consumption above the usual. This is a service that Aquara offers to its subscribers, notifying them if their water use is increasing. Thus, they can check for possible leaks in their indoor installation and avoid high consumption, damage and preserve the resource.

During this time, the company has also continued to address the improvement and maintenance of infrastructures. In the last year, various actions have been carried out in the area of ​​Los Álamos, Cañada de Verich, Callizo Bodón and in the El Pueyo neighborhood.

In this sense, Susana Martínez concludes: “Monitoring, renovating and modernizing water infrastructures is a guarantee for the future, of adaptation to climatic uncertainties and a source of employment and economic movement, more necessary than ever after the forced stoppage imposed by the Covid -19 ".

Water quality

The water was declared an “Essential Service” during the State of Alarm, and the company and the Aquara workers made every effort to guarantee it.

One of the essential tasks carried out by Aquara is conducting analyzes to evaluate the qualities of the resource that reaches homes. In 2020, nearly a thousand inspections and analyzes were carried out on tanks, networks and taps, that is, an average of three a day.

“There is a long way between water in its natural state and the social use we make of it. Aquara manages this process in a sustainable way so that when you turn on the tap, what comes out is quality water, ”says the Aquara Operations Manager in Alcañiz.