Kwekwe to roll out prepaid meters

Michael Magoronga, Midlands Correspondent
KWEKWE City Council is set to roll out prepaid meters during the course of the year as the local authority seeks to boost its revenue base.

The council has budgeted for 900 meters in its US$46 million budget which are set to be installed this year after a false start two years ago.

The local authority had shelved the programme in 2019 after a pilot project revealed some shortfalls on the prepaid meters.

The council engaged four companies namely — Hukoshwa, Utility systems, Trico Investments and Sidal Engineering — to install 300 pre-paid meters at 300 houses.

The results were not pleasing with most meters unable to detect and report if they were tampered with resulting in council shelving the project. In an interview, Kwekwe Mayor Councillor Angeline Kasipo said the prepaid water meters will boost revenue collection which had lately become a major cause for concern for the financially hamstrung local authority.

Cllr Kasipo said the programme will also go a long way in mitigating challenges faced by the council owing to non-availability of meter readers.

“We are planning to pay as you use it. This year we have budgeted for 900 meters which we look forward to installing during the course of the year. Besides that, we are also looking forward to increasing the number of meter readers in the short term,” she said.

Cllr Kasipo said the programme will make ratepayers more careful when using water.

“We have seen the concept working when it was introduced by Zesa, we are also confident that the system will help in making sure that water in conserved and will obviously improve revenue collection.

The pre-paid water system will result in the decrease of the bill owed to us by residents and companies.

We will install the prepaid meters because they are the only solution,” she said. Kwekwe which also supplies water to Redcliff Municipality, will also install a prepaid water meter that will be used by the smaller local authority.

The development comes at a time when ratepayers were berating the local authority for hiking tariffs by more than 500 percent.

The ratepayers who are now threatening not to pay the bills, accusing the council of hiking the tariffs without making proper consultations and choking the ratepayers in their quest to improve their revenue base.

If successful, the concept can come as a solution to the impasse between the local authority and the residents.