BY STAFF WRITER
Harare City Council says 62% of treated water is lost through burst pipes and defunct meters, a situation that is exacerbating water supply deficit against a demand of over 1000 mega litres per day.
Presenting the city’s budget on Tuesday, the chairperson of Finance and Development Committee councillor Tichaona Mhetu said the 2022 budget estimates are hinged on outcomes and inputs in six programme areas with the main focus on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
Other five focus areas of the 2022 budget include Governance and Administration, Social Services, Roads, Public Safety and Security, and Natural Resources, Conservation and Management.
The city’s 2022 programme based budget is skewed towards water and sanitation which takes up 43,7 percent of the total budget of ZWL$10,3 billion.
The budget is anchored on Performance Improvement Plans (PIP) which is a shift from the traditional line item budgeting.
“Water Sanitation and Hygiene is at the core of service delivery. In the area of water production, the city is currently producing an average of 375ML/Day against a demand of over 1000ML/Day. Unfortunately, not all the water produced is billed as a substantial percentage is lost through water bursts and metering issues thus Non-Revenue Water currently is at 62%. The scenario means that city is only accounting for 48% of what it produces,” said Mhetu.
“The 2022 budget estimates are advised by outcomes and inputs in the six programme areas. The predominant focus is on WASH and the budget estimates speak to this aspect by adequately providing for capital and revenue estimates outlay, which constitute 43.3% of the capital budget and 43.7% of Revenue budget respectively,” added Mhetu.
Mhetu said the proposed budget will focus on plugging various loopholes in the distribution water to residents such as pipe replacement, water metering and accurate billing.
COVID-19 restrictions have forced the city to conduct this year’s budget consultations virtually.
Councillor Mhetu lamented underperformance of the 2021 budget citing inefficient internal systems, poor planning in project management and low revenue collection efficiency.
The Harare City Council has been consistently criticised by residents for inadequate water supply that expose the latter to medieval diseases like typhoid.