Prepaid water meters for city centre, low density suburbs

THE Bulawayo City Council is contemplating piloting a prepaid water metering system in the city centre, and low-density areas as part of strategies to increase revenue collection.

The development would see some consumers paying bills in advance for water, which the council says should be a normal business practice.

Although its initial rollout failed to take off in 2019, the intervention is part of measures by the local authority to increase revenue collection efficiency.

According to a confidential report, the local authority has identified the need to modernise its revenue collection systems and processes to improve transparency and accountability, reduce opportunities for corruption and improve the ease of going business for its clients.

The proposal presents a comprehensive plan to leverage technology and human resource changes to achieve these objectives.

The pilot project is set to be a medium-term undertaking and expressions of interest are being considered.

The report states that the benefits of the system include a reduction in debt management costs and payment in advance for services.

However, the downside of the prepaid water system is that consumers may buy large stocks of water in advance and ignore paying rates and other service fees for as long as they have water tokens, said the council.

“In case of stockpiling water tokens council may not be able to enforce payment through service restriction,” reads part of the report.

Gwanda Municipality was one of the first councils to introduce pre-paid water meters in the country before the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) introduced them through a pilot project in Hwange last year.

In January 2019, Bulawayo City Council sought to install water flow limiter devices to restrict supply according to specific needs of consumers as the local authority moved to do away with water disconnections.

The device restricts the flow of water to set individual limits daily and may be a reprieve for low-cost consumers as they would be able to set the amounts they use and pay for usage at the end of each month.

In 2017, the local authority revealed that it had been approached by a number of residents begging for the local authority to install pre-paid water meters within their residences.

At the time, the council said it had received over 1 500 requests from members of the public who wanted prepaid water meters.

The applications were said to be from different suburbs including both eastern and western suburbs.

That was despite several pressure groups claiming to be representing residents in the city saying residents were not interested in the pre-paid water meter system as it inflicted on water being a basic human right leading the local authority to suspend the facility.

A couple of years ago the local authority was forced to abandon the prepaid water meter pilot project in Cowdray Park’s Hlalani Kuhle suburb.