adminTichaona Zindoga Political Editor
In the not so distant future, say in the next few months, residents of Harare may face this kind of injunction as the city has resolved to privatise its water provision department. Privatisation of water essentially means provision of water by the municipality or local authority ceases to be a public good or obligation but one that is driven by commercial interests.
The concept of privatisation of water has been driven by such institutions as the World Bank to allow for private players to commodify and sell water to residents on the argument that the private sector has the capacity to do so in a better way, and that it will create jobs in the process.
Mayor of Harare, Mr Bernard Manyenyeni, in response to an inquiry on the issue, laid out a framework for the implementation of the privatisation project.
He said: “What council must decide is (1), funding for secure water supply (2), water pricing issues to deal with satisfying (a) minimum supply pro-poor safety nets, (b) cost of money if borrowed, and (c) legitimate profit expectations if equity shareholders are brought in.”
But the issue is not without controversy. In fact, riots may as well break out soon.
Local government and planning experts who talked to The Herald this week expressed mixed feelings on the development.
“First of all, water is a service. Every service, for it to be delivered, requires that someone pays for it. There is no free service especially in urban areas,” explained Mr Innocent Chirisa, a senior lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.
“In one way or the other, we pay for various services that we get in urban areas – transport, housing, water, health, etc services. At least, in light of the current Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29:15), the local authority must play a critical role in making sure that its citizens can access the various services that I have mentioned.
“For a city like Harare which has Harare Water as one of its departments, I don’t see the reason for it ‘relinquishing’ this important assignment and letting a private company take over.
“Is it because they do not have sufficient resources – human or financial – to run that function?”
Mr Chirisa noted that private companies ran their businesses for profit – and that this was a source of problems.
“The question becomes: why then pass the burden to property owners, who also will pass the burden to tenants and lodgers, the majority of whom are low-income earners and the poor? Of course, studies have shown that the ‘poor always pay more’,” he regretted.
He explained: “Privatisation tends to ensure that efficiency in service delivery is achieved but it may compromise equity.
“We wouldn’t want to see the poor embarking on undesirable activities like stealing, or resorting to drinking water from unsafe sources because the profit motive has pushed them to doing so.”
He said local authorities must come up with pro-poor policies.
“The poor have a right to be in the city too,” he emphasised.
Planning guru and international expert Mr Percy Toriro says water is a strategic good and its delivery has moral, environmental and economic dimensions and, critically, it is also a service that requires huge capital for investing in the infrastructure and its maintenance.
He explained: “The moral side is what most people that have been opposing the privatisation tend to emphasise on: the argument is how do we cover those that cannot afford to pay so that cities remain inclusive?
“There is no easy solution to this argument in a difficult economy like ours today.
“Ideally, there should be social safety nets that cover such people so that water is available to all.
“Some have also argued that water is a human right and should be made available to all.
“This must be supported by a sustainability mechanism that ensures someone is paying because as long as the water has to be purified at a cost, pumped, and reticulated in a maintained set of infrastructure, someone has to meet the cost.”
He argues that privatisation of water has to be cognisant of the environmental impact of such enterprise.
“If a large segment of the population fails to pay for water and get denied of water and their living conditions deteriorate leading to diseases outbreaks, authorities will still be expected to manage the resultant epidemic.
“In thinking of a sustainable solution, we therefore need to carefully balance between ensuring that water is paid for, and that all classes of people are provided with reasonable water.”
This is a view shared by Mr Chirisa who argues that “there is no harm is conducting a rapid assessment of the likely impacts of privatising their water”.
“I recommend a study commissioned by the city to find out the likely impacts of its policy . . . If the city is not ready to find out then it may as well be ready to get bad results and to live with them. Answers lie with the institutions and society.”
He concluded: “If we just ‘copy and paste’ what has been a success elsewhere, we may get frustrated.”
Impact
Combined Harare Residents Trust’s coordinator Mr Precious Shumba says city fathers have spat in the face of residents, their constituents.
“The privatisation of water by the Harare City Council means the elected representatives have been totally excluded from the obligation to account for the availability and accessibility, quality and acceptability of the water provided by the council,” he said.
“City managers have always desired a situation where they totally control revenues, expenditures and incomes, away from the critical eye of the policymaker.
“The privatisation of water creates fertile grounds for rampant misuse of public funds, given existing loopholes which have been identified but have not been dealt with despite detailed audit findings by the Auditor General published in October 2014,” he added.
Internationally, the issue is hot as well.
The Guardian (UK) in January this year noted that “water privatisation has been politically hot since Britain became the first and only country to sell off its entire water industry in the 1980s.”
The privatisation deals, instigated by the Bretton Woods institutions, noted the article, had been opposed by coalitions of political and environmental groups amid fears that market water prices would increase way above what the poorest could pay.
It noted that since the early 2000s, political anger had mounted against privatisation and in fact, many privatisation deals had been reversed.
“Many cities that rushed to sign 20-year or longer concessions with water companies in expectation of clean water at a socially acceptable cost have chosen to terminate agreements and return urban water provision to public control.
“A report by the Transnational Institute (TNI), Public Services International Research Unit and the Multinational Observatory, suggests that 180 cities and communities in 35 countries, including Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Paris, Accra, Berlin, La Paz, Maputo and Kuala Lumpur, have all ‘re-municipalised’ their water systems in the past decade.
“More than 100 of the ‘returnees’ were in the US and France, 14 in Africa and 12 in Latin America. Those in developing countries tended to be bigger cities than those in richer countries.”
Ten times “NO”
An American organisation, Public Citizen, has produced a paper documenting 10 reasons why water must not be privatised.
It states that privatisation leads to rate increases as corporations utilise rate hikes to maximise profits, which, by definition, is their bottom line.
“This bottom line often comes at the expense of water quality and customer service, but not at the expense of maintaining inflated executive salaries.” (Sounds familiar?)
It notes that the poor are often denied access and because living without water is not an option, people are often forced to consume unsafe water, lest be faced with going without food, medicine or education.
The second reason is hinted above, namely that privatisation undermines water quality as corporate agendas are driven by profits rather than the public good. Privatisation usually results in the compromising of environmental standards.
Equally bad is the fact that private companies that take over water provision are accountable to shareholders, not consumers.
Public Citizen also notes that privatisation fosters corruption as the awarding of contracts “are usually worked out behind closed doors with the details often still kept secret after the contract is signed (which situation) . . . opens itself up to bribery”.
It is also argued that privatisation reduces local control and public rights because, when services are privatised, very little can be done to ensure that the company — be it domestic, foreign or transnational — will work in the best interest of the community.
“Furthermore, if a community is dissatisfied with the performance of the company, buying back the water rights is a very difficult and costly proposition.”
The lobby states that private financing costs more than public financing, and this hits the consumers right in their pockets.
Privatisation leads to job losses, it is argued, and this results in massive layoffs as companies try to minimise costs and increase profits.
The paper also argues, inter alia, that privatisation is difficult to reverse, opens the door for bulk water exports and environmental dangers and ecological imbalance and destruction through over-extraction.
Online Reporter