WATER-TANZANIA: Who Pays the Piper?

By George Mwita Reprint | | Print |

DAR ES SALAAM, Jul 31 2009 (IPS) - When John Rubara* and his family moved into their new house in Dar es Salaam’s Tabata Kimanga, a fast-growing middle-income neighbourhood in Temeke district, the water company disconnected their supply because the previous owner was in arrears.

Rubara actually had little idea what his monthly water bill might turn out to be, so despite paying off the former owner’s bill – more than 200 dollars – he turned to a pirate plumber to reconnect the property to the water system illegally.

Rubara decided to get reconnected. So far he’s happy with his monthly bill – a flat rate equivalent to $10 a month. “We really utilise it whenever it flows. We water our flowers and the planted grass, have tanks to store for future use and occasionally sell to those who are not yet connected.”

The Rubara household illustrates the challenges facing the Dar es Salaam Water Company in managing revenue collection for water in Tanzania’s commercial capital: many residents don’t understand the rates or billing system; rich and poor alike frequently delay settling bills; and illegal connections are a routine fact of life.

Illegal water connections – especially on the main pipeline supplying the Ubungo water tanks from Upper Ruvu, one of the city’s main treatment plants – have contributed significantly to the erratic water provision in many parts of the city.

DAWASCO public relations officer Mary Jovin Lyimo says the company discovered that the new steel pipeline from the Upper Ruvu plant is more vulnerable to do-it-yourself plumbers than the concrete pipe that leads from the larger treatment plant at Lower Ruvu to the areas it serves.

The illegal connections give the company a headache, as it represents a significant financial loss. The Energy and Water Utility Regulatory Authority (EWURA) estimates that 53 percent of the water it treats is lost to vandalism and leakage before it gets to paying customers.

To help eradicate this problem, DAWASCO has continued its campaign to disconnect illegal connections. In six weeks between Jun. 7 and Jul. 17, the company discovered and disconnected more than 597 illegally-connected households along a five-kilometre pipeline in the Kimara area.

Kimara is notorious for illegal connections, as is Kibaha, 45 kilometres outside the city, not far from the Upper Ruvu plant.

DAWASCO says that before the disconnection of illegal pipeline networks, the Ubungo water tanks were never more than 17 percent full. “Since the campaign began, more than twice as much water has been reaching the Ubungo tanks – which now reach 37 percent capacity.” And that is expected to improve further as more illegal connections are being discovered.

Billing also a problem

“However, it is not only vandalism that has been a factor behind poor collection of water revenues but also the billing system itself,” says Richard Peter, DAWASCO’s commercial manager.

The billing system DAWASCO took over led to customers getting incorrect bills and, he says, many took advantage and never paid, while others were in constant conflict with the company.

It was after DAWASCO introduced Engineering, Analysis, Design and Management of systems (EDAMS) that things started changing for the better.

EDAMS, in the contented jargon of the company, “is an integrated utility information system with the functionality to cover most requirements in the areas of maintenance, monitoring, management, design and network planning in water utility environment.”

The system helps reduce unaccounted-for water and even provides information for demand analysis to engineers operating the system and planning changes.

Peter says even describing the functionality of EDAMS as “billing” is misleading. A more appropriate title should be “commercial system”.

Here’s how it works: where there are no meters, an area is assessed based on water availability, then a flat rate is set for all consumers based on usage.

“For customers whose connections are metered, our staffs do the reading between the 1st and the 10th of every month. The entry process of these readings to the system at DAWASCO is done manually but the best thing is that we run bills at the end of the month,” says Peter.

The introduction of Short Message Service (SMS) billing system has revolutionised the way the company collects its revenues. He proudly points out that sms notices of outstanding amounts is a much more efficient way of reminding customers to pay their bills, than radio adverts or public announcements using loudspeakers on vans driven through neighbourhoods.

Before EDAMS was introduced, the company used to collect only 25 per cent of its monthly collection by the middle of the next month. DAWASCO now collects 50 per cent or more of its outstanding bills by the 15th of the month. A billing process that used to take two weeks, is now done in three hours, and within 12 hours of the first of the next month, customers receive their latest bill on their mobile phones, though paper bills are still issued in case one fails to read the message.

“In June last year, we had about 8,000 customers with mobile phone subscription. As we speak today, there are more than 37,000. Our customers find this very convenient and it has consolidated our company’s cash flow,” he told IPS.

He concludes that since DAWASCO took over from City Water, revenue collection has been steadily increasing every year, despite the fact that widespread vandalism is still a serious setback to the whole process.

*Not his real name