Council seeks funds to roll out prepaid meters

Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Financially hamstrung Harare City Council is looking for funds to roll out 100 000 prepaid water meters in areas that constantly receive water supplies. The city, which has completed the technical evaluation of its pilot programme, says the smart water meter project was occasioned by the need to enhance revenue inflows by plugging leakages and also implementing effective water demand management.

Recent minutes from the council’s environmental management committee indicate that upon completion of the technical evaluation, a request for proposal was issued to five contractors to outline how they intended to roll out the project.

“The project started with a tender that the city flighted in the local Press in April 2015, culminating in the award of the tender to five bidders — Hukoshwa Resources, Industrial Products Solutions, Syvern Investments, Tricon Investments Group and Utility Systems — out of 29 bids for the project,” read the min- utes.

“Contracts were signed on April 19, 2016, inviting them to commence installation of the meters and associated connections, together with the smart metering management systems and related infrastructure.” The committee noted that the contractors, who commenced installation of the meters at the end of July last year, had completed installations by the end of the following month. Each of the five contractors was allocated a quota of 400 meters to install on selected properties in the Avenues, Bluffhill, Budiriro, Eastlea, Greendale, Kambuzuma, Sunningdale and Waterfalls. In total, 2 000 meters were to be installed across the selected suburbs.

“The selection was motivated by the desire to expose the meters to different water supply environments across the city in order to study the behaviour of the different meters supplied by the different contractors in those settings,” reads the minutes.

“The technical evaluation of the meters was very thorough and revealed that all the meters were robust enough to withstand any water supply environments they were exposed to. The commercial results were such that there was a drop in water consumption by the majority of consumers, resulting in a corresponding reduction in revenue.” According to the report, not only had consumers started paying their bills religiously after installation of the smart meters, but they also managed to repair their internal plumbing systems.