Management of non-revenue water: a case study of the water supply in Lusaka,Zambia

Abstract

Management of Non-Revenue Water (NRW) has been undergoing several and continuous transformations over the past two decades. The International Water Association (IWA) as well as other key stakeholders have been trying to find the ‘Best Practices’ in managing non-revenue water so as to help water utility companies reduce water losses and subsequent loss of revenue. In Zambia, the passing of the water supply and sanitation act no 28 in 1997 led to the establishment of water utility companies. The Non-Revenue Water National Technical Task Force was formed by the Government in 2014 as a national strategy for management of NRW. The main objective of this study was to, “investigate the non-revenue water levels in the water service delivery in Lusaka and to assess the adopted management practices to manage nonrevenue water and thereafter come up with some recommendations that would help improve the current strategies”. Both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews as well as document review and participant observation were used in data gathering. The findings revealed that the NRW is at 44%, with the main contributors being physical losses, commercial losses and unbilled authorised consumption, each contributing 45%, 38% and 17%, respectively. The physical losses are mainly due to the poor state of the infrastructure which has led to high levels of leakages and pipe bursts. Metering errors and water theft are the main sources of commercial losses, while fire hydrants for firefighting as well as new connections and reconnections which had not been assigned service, due to lack of meters or negligence on the part of the company personnel, are the main sources of unbilled authorised consumption. The recommended management practices by the International Water Association to augment the overall ‘nonrevenue water strategy’ are not wholly being implemented because of the poor state of infrastructure which seems to impede the efforts aimed at reducing NRW. To this effect, there’s an urgent need to undertake a complete overhaul of the existing network in stages starting with the most problematic ones. The current level of NRW may not be a true reflection of the actual situation because about half of the connections are not metered. Key words: NRW, Real loss, Apparent loss, Unbilled authorized consumption, Leakages, Management, Strategy