The National Water Supply and Sanitation Council – NWASCO has disclosed that only 452,000 households are connected to piped water, trailing the electricity utility ZESCO which surpassed 1 million household customers last year 2019.
NWASCO Public Relations and Communications Manager Patricia Litiya told the the Zambian Business Times – ZBT in an exclusive interview that a total number of 452,279 households are connected to piped water across the country as of end of 2019 and this is from 11 water and sanitation companies.
Water utility companies have been challenged to be more agile and provide water piped solutions to meet the need of over an estimated 5 million households in Zambia. The lack of innovation and aggressiveness in water utilities has led to the proliferation of borehole drilling companies which charges over K15,000 for one borehole.
It has been argued that if Zambian households can afford to hire these borehole drilling companies at such price points (over K15,000 per borehole), the same amounts could have been utilized by the water utilities to pay for infrastructure and equipment on a self financing model to provide piped water, as the case with electricity provision.
And on the applications made by the water and sanitation companies to hike water tariffs, Litiya stated that NWASCO is still reviewing the proposal and no decision has been reached yet.
The council has indicated that it is cautious of the current environment as a result of the COVID pandemic which demands a lot more water usage, hence the public will be informed once the decision on the proposed increase in tariffs is effected.
Water and Sanitation companies are mandated to propose for an increase in water tariffs annually and the council has indicated that it’s still reviewing this year’s applications considering the current situation of the Covid -19 outbreak.
She said it should be noted that consideration for tariff increases are primarily the operation and maintenance costs and that in some utility companies that are able to meet their operation and maintenance costs, investment costs are considered but to a limited extent.
Litiya added that there are various infrastructure projects being undertaken across the country by government with support from Financiers and cooperating partner, and that NWASCO is available as the regulator to support investments by water and sanitation companies who undertake their projects under the umbrella of the Ministry of Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental protection.
“NWASCO therefore remains committed to ensure that Water and Sanitation companies continue to offer safe and affordable water to consumers through the formulation of regulation. This is done through the development of guidelines in line with changing trends in service delivery of water supply and sanitation. NWASCO has since developed over fifteen guidelines all aimed at enhancing regulation,” She said.
