eThekwini Municipality outlines plan to tackle water losses

eThekwini Municipality outlines plan to tackle water losses

The water and sanitation unit in eThekwini Municipality plans to install thousands of water meters in an effort to combat water losses that are costing the municipality more than R1 billion a year.

Head of water and sanitation Ednick Msweli detailed the plans to address the non-revenue water losses in a recent podcast on the City’s online platform eThekwini Matters. These losses are at 58% and the rand value resulting from this is close to R1.7bn.

The City has adopted a water turnaround strategy to deal with the issues affecting the delivery of the service.

Msweli said the City was prioritising the issue of water and sanitation and that was reflected in the budget set aside for these functions. He warned that not doing anything to deal with these problems was not an option.

The turnaround strategy seeks to improve the performance of the water and sanitation unit and reposition it to be able to meet the City’s current and future water demands.

Msweli said the water turnaround strategy will solve water supply problems.

“As part of that strategy, a decision was made that we must install 80 000 water meters every year.

“We have started with that. This is our first year. We are not quite going to meet the 80 000 in the first year but we are going to do 50 000 new water meters this year and next financial year going forward, we have got to achieve the 80 000,” the head of water and sanitation said.

He added, “That is just one of the initiatives that helps you reduce your water losses. When you (City) reduce your water losses then you have more water to give to people and hopefully people will start to see more water in their taps, there are many other elements with that including fixing leaks and improving the performance of our call centre.”

At the heart of the turnaround strategy, he emphasised the establishment of the water and sanitation unit as a distinct business unit.

“The strategy says it must be a business unit. If I need vehicles I must not go and negotiate with someone else or another unit. I must have that authority here and the capacity here, the staff, everything in the same unit,” said Msweli.

The Mercury