The country’s five water boards are losing K60 billion annually due to non-revenue water, which accounts for an average of 35 percent of water produced for their respective distribution systems.

This was announced in Lilongwe yesterday during the ninth Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) meeting with the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (Jica) aimed at strengthening the boards’ capacity to reduce non-revenue water.

In an interview on the sidelines of the meeting, Lilongwe Water Board (LWB) chief executive officer Sili Mbewe said the country’s water boards are now losing an average of 35 percent of the water, with LWB having registered 38 percent or about K15 billion worth of water lost before it reaches the customer either through pipe leaks, theft or metering inaccuracies.

He said: “In the context of all Malawi’s water boards, we can put at 35 percent which translates into an annual loss of non revenue water losses of about K60 billion across all water boards in Malawi.”

The non-revenue water loss has not improved since 2021, when a similar 35 percent in water losses across the five water boards was valued at K30 billion.

Asked if the doubling in the value of the water losses is due to increased tariffs, Mbewe said it is due to rising cost of inputs in production and distribution of water in the recent global economy that has impacted the cost of production.

During the JCC meeting in 2021, LWB recorded a K10 billion loss while all the five boards lost about K30 billion, for the same 35 percent of non-revenue water.

In his remarks yesterday, Jica chief representative Kazuhiro Tambara said they are working together with the water boards to reduce non-revenue water that will enable the boards to gradually reduce revenue losses in the future.

He said: “We are working together in formulation of strategic plans to reduce non-revenue water in the coming years. We are also working together in finding ways through which water is lost and how we can solve these problems.”

Ministry of Water and Sanitation director of water supply services Prince Mleta said the boards are losing huge volumes of water through illegal connections, vandalism of pipes and old piping networks.

He said government recently adopted the National Water Policy which speaks to the issues of non-revenue water, and strengthens functions of the Water Service Association of Malawi (Wasama), which he said are crucial in ensuring that non-revenue water losses are reduced.

Non-revenue water has been an issue in Malawi for a long time, and authorities have attributed it to physical and commercial losses.

The physical losses include old pipes, vandalism of water pipes, among others, for the non revenue water losses, while factors contributing to commercial losses include illegal connections and inaccuracies in metering and billing systems.

Jica is funding a five-year non-revenue water project while the World Bank is supporting the board’s Water and Sanitation Project that seeks to replace outdated infrastructure.

The post Non-revenue water losses hit K60bn appeared first on The Nation Online.