Prepaid water meters no panacea to Harare’s water woes

HARARE Mayor Herbert Gomba seems to be so much obsessed with prepaid water meters to the extent that he cannot wait any longer to have them installed.

Speaking in January this year, Gomba said the pre-paid water meters were long overdue and were the only way the city could constantly provide potable water and attract investment in new water sources.

He was saying this against the background of Harare residents rejecting the city council’s plans to introduce a compulsory roll out of the pre-paid water meters.

In this year’s budget, the city council actually set aside $12 million for the water meters after undertaking a pilot study in some parts of the city. The pre-paid water system involves a billing system where consumers pay for the service upfront, using a gadget that is specially designed with a smart card technology.

Gomba and his fellow council officials seem to be working on the belief that pre-paid water meters are a panacea to the water problems haunting the city.

Yet this is just an illusion, and the sooner the council officials realise the inefficacy of the proposed water meters the better for the city.

The fact is that problems of water provision in the capital run deeper, as the taps continue to run dry for weeks in many suburbs under the city council officials’ watch.

Gomba and his team are at the moment in limbo with regards to the water supply situation, and it seems they have decided to leave the untenable status quo to fate.

They are no longer moved when suburbs go for weeks without running water, at least in the past the city officials used to inform the public about pending water cuts.

One of the reasons being cited by Gomba and his city officials in defence of pre-paid meters is that they will be able to collect more revenue and recover debts from the residents.

This is another misconception characterising the thinking of the city officials.

On the contrary, pre-paid meters are likely to result in the decline in revenue collection simply because the majority of the city residents live in poor suburbs and cannot afford to pay. This does not mean advocating for residents to continue getting water for free from the city, which requires the money to re-invest in the water management system.

The fact is that the city officials have to juggle between providing water as a basic human right to its residents and the collection of revenue. The major debate centred on pre-paid water meters is on balancing access to water as a developmental and human rights issue and the pre-paid water system’s effects on residents, especially the poor communities.

The United Nations General Assembly’s Resolution 64/292 of 2010 recognises that access to water and sanitation is a basic human rights issue. In 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, through adopting General Comment No. 15, emphasised on the right to water, in line with national constitutions of many developing countries.

Water is also important that it has been a subject of the United Nations, especially the 17 Sustainable Development Goals which place it as a human rights issue in goal 6.1.

Yet, installing pre-paid water meters is as good as privatising and commodifying water, thus making it out of reach of the majority of people living in cities like Harare.

Many city officials in developing countries that have installed pre-paid water meters have often discovered that they do not address the fundamental management questions when it comes to urban water supply.

This is mainly because the pre-paid water system is installed in a multiple stressor environment, and thus cannot be the panacea to problems affecting the provision of water to residents. This often leaves urban managers facing a huge headache and torn between continuing supplying water or cutting off residents who cannot afford to pay, especially in the presence of the pre-paid water meter system.

As for Harare, there are numerous reasons why the installation of pre-paid water meters will not act as a magic bullet in solving the shortages of water that are hitting the city on a daily basis.

Gomba and his team at Town House must first put their house in order when it comes to the management of water resources to ensure that the service is up to scratch and in line with modern trends in the provision and management of water.

The city has an archaic water infrastructure that will not all of a sudden become perfect simply because pre-paid water meters have been installed.

What will be the use of pre-paid water meters when the infrastructure cannot carry the water to the residents? At the same time, the city will not be able to raise enough funds from the residents to re-invest in the rehabilitation of the water provision system simply because many cannot afford to sustain the pre-payment system.

The city officials have to first fight the rampant corruption being reported almost on a weekly basis within the city council if they hope to set up an efficient water provision system. The city has already lost an opportunity to put its house in order by failing to utilise the US$144 million loan that it obtained from China Eximbank a few years ago.

The loan was meant to rehabilitate the city’s water works and restore its near dysfunctional piping system, but the works have been abandoned after only half of the funds have been used.

There were numerous reports of corruption surrounding this loan facility, including that the city officials preferred buying luxury vehicles using the funds instead of directing the money to the real work.

In recent days, the city officials have been blaming their inefficiencies in water provision to the drying up of Harava and Seke dams, and the declining water levels in Lake Chivero, the major supplier of potable water to the city.

While droughts have often caused such inconveniences, many have been wondering why the city authorities have not been investing in the construction of extra water sources for the city. Even if the pre-paid water meters are installed and actually bring extra funds to the city, without a deliberate effort in funding new water sources like the long-awaited Kunzvi Dam, the problems will still persist.

The revenue that the city is getting from those paying for water should be ploughed back into the system for maintenance, yet the city sometimes is lethargic when it comes to committing resources to their specific areas of need. This has resulted in the city increasingly failing to purchase water treatment chemicals to deliver potable water to the suburbs.

Of course, the city officials have been arguing that what they are collecting is not enough to cover for such necessities, but they have a mandate to look for other sources of funds to cover for the city’s nagging problems.

Without putting its house in order, it will be a delusion for the city officials to believe that their problems in water provision will be solved by the installation of pre-paid water meters.

This is because the pre-paid water system will not guarantee a continuous flow of water, as water cuts will remain because of the incapacities of officials to adequately provide the commodity.

Commercialisation and commodification of essential services like water is a neo-liberal thinking that has often led to the collapse of systems, as it is done mainly with the aim of raising capital, without due regard to the plight of the supposed beneficiaries.

Such a system tends to worsen urban poverty and create new disparities among the residents, with those more affluent benefiting more than those who lack.

Given a choice, the urban poor are always inclined to rejecting the idea of installing the pre-paid water system because it cannot be viewed as a choice for them.

This explains the huge resistance which the Harare City Council is facing on its idea to implement the pre-paid water meters, especially from high density suburbs where the majority live. These residents know too well that they will not be able to sustain payments for the pre-paid water meters, and without access to water, diseases such as cholera and typhoid will start to manifest.

This will in turn erode the health gains that have been made by both Government and the city council over the past years.

The resistance is not only in Harare, water consumers in other cities like Harare, Bulawayo, Masvingo and Mutare have been rejecting the installation of the pre-paid water meters.

In fact, it is a violation of Section 77 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which guarantees access to potable water if the installation of pre-paid water meters means that the majority will find it difficult to access the commodity.

Even outside Zimbabwe, pre-paid water meters have not been able to achieve what the officials say they will.

A South African judge ruled in 2008 that the installation of pre-paid water system would not result in the improvement of the provision of water and its management, but would succeed in only worsening the plight of the majority poor who resided in the township of Soweto.

A 2014 research in African cities such as Kampala, Maseru, Maputo, Lusaka, Windhoek and Nakuru found out that pre-paid water system did not improve provision of the commodity and neither did it improve water management.

The research concluded that effective management systems need to be put in place first to ensure that the problems associated with the provision of water are addressed before the installation of pre-paid water system.