Improve the access of "Historical Disavantages People" to basic services
Part funding of the project for the Modernisation of Water Supply in Soweto
Context
In South Africa, municipalities have financial autonomy and are responsible for the local water supply systems. Originating from the Demarcation Process achieved in 2000, the new municipality of Johannesburg with its 3 millions inhabitants comprises different townships of which Soweto is the most important one, with a population of 1 million South Africans (or more according to certain NGOs). Johannesburg has restructured its municipal public services (water, electricity, transports) by switching to autonomous financial entities. Held at a 100% by Johannesburg’s municipality, Johannesburg Water (JW) is a private company in charge of the water supply services. JW gets its supply of drinking water from Rand Water, a public entity responsible for the production of drinking water in the Johannesburg area.
Johannesburg Water is faced with two challenges:
- An important backlog in terms of infrastructure. According to local authorities, about 19000 homes are still deprived of drinking water and almost 72 000 do not have minimal sanitation services.
- A deficit financial situation partially caused by revenue loss in Soweto. With a flat-rate billing system, Soweto’s population consumes 30% of the water bought by JW, yet the township represents only 10% of the company’s turnover. This revenue loss is mainly due to frauds by the consumers and to physical water loss through the used installations.
In this context, AFD teamed up with Johannesburg municipality for the Gcin’amanzi project (in zulu: “water preservation”). The project is built around several measures intended to solve the water service problem in Soweto. JW decided to adopt a global approach, aiming to improve the quality of the service and to provide financially viable and sustainable drinking water and sanitation facilities. The project stands on the Greater Soweto area, which has 162,000 houses.
Goals
The main goal of the project is to restore the infrastructures of the water system, to improve the quality of the water supply in Soweto and to reduce JW’s technical and commercial wastes.
Project detail
The following operations were initiated:
- The rehabilitation of the water system and the installation of pipelines with larger diameter set up directly along the roads (and not passing through blocks of houses as it is nowadays).
- The improvement of technical and commercial information services.
- The shift from an estimated consumption billing system to a controlled consumption by installation of prepaid meters.
- The training of consumers on the importance of preserving water resources, informing them about their rights and obligations.
Impacts
The observed impacts are the following:
- 162 000 houses benefited from the water service improvement in Soweto
- The project generated 1 268 local jobs
- An 84% decrease in the water consumption has been observed in houses benefiting from an intervention, that is 55 400 litres per household every month.
Amounts and schedule
Start-up: December 2003
Funding: €40 millions remitted to the Municipality of Johannesburg, technical support by Jowam, a Suez-Environment consortium in association with BEE enterprises.