Water loss still high, warns Ewura

Dar es Salaam. The government yesterday directed water authorities to go for smart strategies to end and control water leakages causing huge losses.

This was said as latest Energy and Water Utilities Regulatory Authority (Ewura) reports reveal that water losses are still high.

The two reports that were launched on Monday are ‘Regional and National Project Water Utilities’, and ‘District and Township Water Utilities 2020/21’.

Going by the ‘District and Township Water Utilities’ report, water loss was quoted at 40 percent at district and township levels.

Further, water loss was recorded at 38 percent in regional authorities and 24.4 percent in national authorities, according to the ‘Regional and National Project Water Utilities’.

This came at a time when the total water production has been reported to rise to 550.3 million cubic metres in the 2020/21 financial year compared to 521 million cubic metres recorded in the previous year.

Ewura acting director general Exaud Fatael said the findings of their studies show that water loss was caused by lack of formal strategies to prevent the leakages.

He said the high water loss rate was adversely affecting water authorities’ efficiency in provision of services to their customers.

“As it is, Ewura has prepared the Guidelines for Development Non Revenue Water (NRW) Reduction Strategy for WSSAs (Water Supply and Sanitation Authorities),” said Mr Fatael during the launching of the reports.

The Guideline was launched yesterday by Water Ministry’s permanent secretary Antony Sanga.

Mr Sanga directed the water authorities to walk the talks on the guidelines.

He challenged them to think outside the box so that they could come up with long lasting solutions to end water loss and leakage.

“We need to look at the best practices, being within or outside the country. We do not need to lock ourselves within our areas of work,” stressed Mr Sanga.

Ewura Board of Directors’ member Fadhili Manongi said to curb huge water losses, Ewura had recommended water authorities to ensure they make follow-ups on the ongoing water projects implemented in their areas of jurisdiction.

“This will make them proactive in responding to water infrastructure damages, if any, and thus preventing water loss” said Mr Manongi.

This, he added, should go in tandem with implementing new water loss preventive strategies.

In a another development, Mr Manongi said, the number of clean water customers jumped by 10 percent to 1.217 million in the 2020/21 financial year.

Under the period of reference, the total water connections increased to 1.046 million compared to 954,167 posted in the year before.

The main reason for the increase in connections was the extension of the water supply network, according to the Ewura report.

Total revenue collection increased by 12 percent to Sh343.63 billion in 2020/21.

“Overall average revenue collection improved by 0.7 percent to 95.8 percent,” reads a part of the ‘Regional and National Project Water Utilities’ report.

Again, total revenue from water billing for Regional WSSAs increased by one percent, whilst, revenue from sanitation billing and other operations declined by six percent and 19 percent respectively.