John Chege of Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC) and Sylvia Ndirangu of WSUP, outside NCWSC’s office in Maili Saba, Dandora. Having an office within the community is regarded as having been a significant success
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The sign at the NCWSC office in the settlement of Maili Saba in Dandora. The office serves as a customer care and complaints centre on water issues for residents
A Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company application form for a water meter. During the last three months of 2015, 890 new applications for metered connections to compounds were completed by landlords and submitted to NCWSC
SWIFT partner Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) has completed its work in the informal settlement of Dandora in Nairobi, having laid an impressive 23.5km of new pipe network and provided 52,000 people with access to clean, safe, sustainable water.
The entire network will soon be officially handed over to the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC), with whom WSUP has worked closely throughout the project. With WSUP’s support, NCWSC’s Informal Settlements Department is now being elevated to the status of a fully-fledged commercial region, which will put it on a more secure footing to be able to improve the quality of service to low-income areas and informal settlements.
Reducing ‘non-revenue water’
WSUP and NCWSC have together been working to reduce ‘non-revenue water’: water that has been produced but is not charged to a customer, as a result of leaks, metering inaccuracies, or theft. In some of the informal settlements, non-revenue water can be above 90% due to the inadequacy of the network and the proliferation of illegal connections.
The process of reducing non-revenue water by legalising connections within the project area to ensure the sustainability of the network is ongoing. During the last three months of 2015, 890 new applications for metered connections to compounds were completed by landlords and submitted to NCWSC, which processed 685 applications during the period, despite delays caused by the transition of NCWSC’s Informal Settlements Department to a commercial region.
Community collaboration
The campaign to connect new and reactivated water meters is being led by a team based at an NCWSC site office which opened a year ago at the Chief’s camp in the settlement of Maili Saba, a community in Dandora. The office, from which application forms for water connections can be picked up and returned, serves as a customer care and complaints centre on water issues for residents. This is the first time NCWSC has established such an office so close to the community it serves, and it regards the office as having been a significant success.
With community collaboration essential to ensure the long-term viability of the network, WSUP and NCWSC continue to meet regularly with the residents of Dandora. The partners monitor how successfully NCWSC’s team is promoting legal connections, and discuss how to address challenges such as illegal connections and non-payment of water bills by metered customers.
The challenge with the illegal connections has been the timing of disconnecting them. Experience on this project has shown that the vast majority of people are happy to pay for a service if it is reliable, good quality and direct to their compound.
Once all connections in Dandora are both legal and metered, with landlords and residents paying the official tariff for what they use, the new and improved water network will be financially sustainable and will considerably increase the revenue of NCWSC from the area, making the benefits it brings set to last.
