Northern Ireland Water is to cut more than 300 jobs in the current financial year, the company confirmed today.
The cuts are the latest phase of a workforce reduction from around 2,000 to just over 1,400 announced in the company business plan when it was established as a wholly government owned company.
The news came as it issued its first annual report and admitted missing a series of key service targets - including quality of drinking water and number of pollution incidents.
The company said its target for post reductions in 2008/09 was 304 on top of 112 posts which went last year - 32 of them through a voluntary early retirement scheme.
Chairman and chief executive Chris Mellor said the continued cuts were need for cost control.
Overall the company said it had met only 12 of 21 key targets set for its first full year as a state-owned company.
It still lost 156.52 million litres of water a day through leaky pipes and other faults - but that was marked down as a success as the target had been to reduce loss to 157 million litres a day. It was also well down on the
168.06 million litres lost in the previous year.
The target of providing clean drinking water 99.4 per cent of the time was missed - and at 99.3 per cent was worse than the figure for 2006.
Overall the company had a turnover of £297.7 million and an operating profit of £63.9 million.
PA