Mutare needs US$23m for burst pipes

MUTARE City Council requires US$23 million to repair pipe bursts and other water leakages that have resulted in the municipality losing a whopping 62 percent of treated water on a daily basis.

City Engineer, Engineer Maxwell Kerith revealed this week that apart from recurrent pipe bursts, illegal connections, faulty water meters and data handling errors are some of the bottlenecks causing the huge losses.

He also said the city’s water supply system is currently unsustainable due to sub-economic tariffs, and thus in the absence of Government grants and hand-outs from international partners, it will collapse.

“Mutare City Council has only one water treatment plant at the moment, which is the Odzani Water Treatment Plant. At this plant, we treat water drawn from Pungwe River and Odzani/Small Bridge dams.

“The treatment plant has a nominal design capacity of 63,7 mega-litres per day with a reported peak throughput of around 80 mega-litres per day. It costs about US$0,28 to produce a cubic metre of water that we sell at US$0,39 to residents, but payable in local currency at the official forex exchange rate,” he said.

“However, because our suppliers do not price goods and services using the official rate, our water tariff is sub-economic. This means that the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) coverage for the City of Mutare is still below the upper threshold of the regional benchmark which is 150 percent.

“This has a negative bearing on sustainability if council does not receive adequate grants for the water from Central Government. If we are to run our water supply system sustainably, which means catering for planned improvements, the lowest water tariff should be around US$0.61 per cubic metre assuming that all customers pay in United States Dollars.”

Eng Kerith said although council has over the years managed to reduce water leakages from 68 percent to 62 percent, the figure is still very high.

“When you further consider the fact that at best 60 percent of our water revenue is collected, you find that the water section which runs on a ring-fenced account can hardly sustain itself. Since 2012, Mutare City Council has been seriously documenting these water losses through the peer-reviewed Service Level Benchmarking (SLB) process and coming up with Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs).

“Because of our low bill collection ratio over the years, it is difficult to implement these plans in full.

“Several remedies have been put in place to minimise the losses. We have since improved our response time to water bursts through capacitating the water section. This was also supported by the African Development Bank administered Zimfund Project.

“Through the Dutch-government funded Nuffic training programme and in partnership with Vitens evides Internattion (VEI), council has trained the water section technical staff in pressure management, procured laptops and equipment for flow and pressure management.

“Council has also installed and repaired Pressure Reducing Valves (PRVs) to manage excess pressure which leads to more bursts and enhanced leaks, especially at off-peak times when customers are not drawing a lot of water. Faulty customer water metres have also been replaced for the top 300 customers. Council recently awarded a tender for the supply and delivery of 5 000 more water meters,” he said.

The city’s daily water demand stands at 82.7 mega-litres against a nominal plant design capacity of 63.7 mega-litres a day and this gives a deficit of 19 mega-litres a day.

“It is also important to understand that in recent years, due to rampant veld fires, mountain-slope agriculture and artisanal mining, we have been losing our treatment capacity due to very high turbidity from both Odzani Dam and Pungwe River water.

“This has badly affected our water supply. According to our water infrastructure master-plan, by 2025, we should have completed the construction of the Odzi Water Scheme which draws water from Osborne Dam through Odzi River. While this plant was partially built by the then Ministry of Water Resources in the 1980, we are now reviewing the proposal before resumption of the project.

“Mutare City Council recently became the only urban local authority with a valid Spatial Planning Master-plan.

This will come with an additional 14 595 hectares of land for expansion. So this new water supply scheme is very necessary,” said Eng Kerith.