Guyana collaborates to fight non-revenue water

Sep 26, 2017 News

Reducing non-revenue water (NRW) continues to be a major challenge for many Caribbean nations. NRW is water that is treated and distributed, yet, does not contribute to the utility’s income.
According to World Bank statistics, 32 billion cubic meters (m3) of water is lost annually due to leakage in developing countries. Some 16 billion m3 of this lost water is classified as NRW which is attributed mainly to theft, poor metering, meter reading errors or poor and out dated infrastructure.
Numerous countries within the region are making strides to address NRW. At present, Jamaica’s National Water Commission is working with an Israeli Company, Miya Arison Group, to reduce these losses with funding from an Inter-American Development Bank loan valued at US$42.5M. This project focuses on improving water distribution in the Kingston and Saint Andrew areas while reducing NRW.
Last March, Jamaica’s Minister within the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Dr. Horace Chang admitted that NRW is something that can be eliminated. Chang feels that reducing NRW to 30% can improve the island’s resilience to drought.
In 2012, The Bahamas sought to aggressively tackle the issue. At the time, the country estimated that it was losing 6.87 million gallons of water per day and under a similar IDB loan it aimed at reducing NRW by 40% over ten years.
Addressing leakage and non-revenue water is critical to the region, argues Patricia Aquing, Executive Director, Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association.
She posits, “Statistics show that in some countries, water that runs through an expensive process, you have 50/60 % leakage. And when you think of the cost of winning water and then 50% of it goes down the drain literally in your drains and broken mains, it’s a tremendous issue.”
In Guyana, the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) plans to use technology to tackle metering and meter reading errors which largely contribute to NRW. Marlon Daniels, GWI’s Executive Director, Commercial Services and Customer Relations explained that the company is preparing to launch a mobile application that will be beneficial to both customers and the utility.
Daniels explained that there are many possibilities of meter reading errors with the manual reading of meters, adding that if a meter reader wrongly records the digits on the meter, this leads to erroneous billings.
Daniels further pointed out that the issue is compounded if those erroneous digits are entered into the GWI’s billing system.
“The mobile application reduces the possibility of both,” he said. “The application performs an onsite validation of the reading, comparing same with previous readings using pre-set parameters, once outside of the parameters, the meter reader is prompted to double check the reading before moving on to the next customer,” Daniels said.
Daniels envisions that the mobile application will eliminate human errors.
To complement the mobile application, the water utility company is also pursuing a smart metering pilot with Diehl Metering. Tim Panzer, International Project Manager Systems at Diehl Metering explained that the pilot has commenced with the installation of 120 smart meters in Georgetown.
Mr. Panzer explained that meter readers would be able to pick up readings by walking or driving by the premises. He added that under the smart metering project, meters in an entire area can be monitored hourly or daily to ensure more accurate readings.
NRW water will be among the issues regional ministers discuss when they meet at the 13th High Level Forum for Caribbean ministers responsible for water. The HLF is slated for the 26th Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association Conference which will take place in Guyana in October.