Prepaid water meters roll out begins

HARARE City Council has selected five companies to install prepaid water meters in both residential and industrial areas in the capital city as the local authority forges ahead to ensure that consumers pay for water before use.

There have been resistance to the project by some residents who argue that water is a constitutional right and demanding payment first for one to access the resource is tantamount to violating some provisions of the supreme document.

Nevertheless, The Sunday Mail has gathered that the full scale roll out of the prepaid water meters is set to commence any time soon after city authorities selected Utility Systems, Syvern Investments, Hukoshwa, Industrial Chemical and Tricon to undertake the programme.

The selection of the companies follow the piloting of the programme last year in areas such as Sunningdale, Waterfalls, Bluffhill, Westgate and Avenues.

Harare City Council said the pilot was a success.

Last week, Harare water acting director, Eng Hosiah Chisango said the local authority now had to send the names of the contractors to the State Procurement Board for finalisation of the process.

“We completed the internal adjudication process and we approved all the five contractors we used during the pilot project,” he said.

“We now await (Mrs Josephine Ncube) Acting Town Clerk’ s signature and we will send the names of the contractors to State Procurement Board, where the process will be finalised.

“We wanted to start as soon as possible but we were disrupted by the typhoid outbreak which diverted our attention.

“A separate adjudication will however be done for servers that will be used for communication by all the meters.

“We hope that by mid-February everything will be completed so that we embark on the citywide roll out.”

Eng Chisango added that a reduction in water usage was recorded in suburbs that had the prepaid water meters under the pilot project.

“We recorded a decrease in water usage in suburbs such as Sunningdale and we hope rollout in all suburbs will minimise water usage across the city,” he said.

However, Mr Darlington Chisvo, a resident from Sunningdale, said the prepaid water meters need to be adjusted to suit the water situation in Harare.

“When the system was introduced, we thought it was going to be better because we would be managing our water consumption.

‘‘ But it is actually worse because we do not have the water even after paying for it,” he said.

“When the water supplies resume, the units of kiloliters in the system would have been reduced drastically and we are failing to understand how this system works.

“We also heard that the water prepaid meters are connected to a server which communicates to the main server at Martin Rowan, however the network is always down and this affects our water supplies.”

The new water system will work in the same way as the elec- tricity prepaid meters with consumers purchasing water vouchers at various vendor booths to be contracted by the city.

Council officials say the meters use a battery that lasts between three to seven years without being charged or changed.

Individual meters will be connected to a local data concentrator that uses radio signals to communicate with a main server at the main water station.

To cushion disadvantaged residents, Harare will introduce a rate limiter which blocks water when one fails to recharge, but will allow a daily ration.

Last year, Government implored local authorities to install prepaid water meters, despite some resistance from residents’ associations.

Bulawayo City Council abandoned the idea after residents rejected the proposal.

The new water system will work in the same way as the electricity prepaid meters with consumers purchasing water vouchers at various vendor booths to be contracted by the city.