eThekwini Municipality said it is adopting a Water Turnaround Strategy which was adopted by Council and approved by National Treasury.
On Sunday at a press briefing, the Municipality said its strategy has 13 objectives.
One is sound financial management.
This is despite the Municipality’s operating cost coverage ratio at 0.85.
Cyril Xaba, the Mayor of eThekwini, said a ratio of between 1.2 to 1.5, was reached over a period of five years.
“The profit margin of the business is also very low as we are sitting with an overdraft of R18 billion for water and R6 billion for sanitation and it will take us about three years to start to generate a surplus that we can plough back into the business, particularly for infrastructure.”
He also said the aim is to have a water and sanitation budget with cash for 90 days.
Currently the cash collection is 67% and the plan is to increase collection to 92% next year.
He said the second aim of the strategy, is to address non-revenue water (NRW).
“Currently, our NRW is sitting at 58%. With the strategy, that we intend driving aggressively, we must reduce NRW by 5% annually.”
Xaba said in the next five years, NRW will be reduced by 25%.
“As a City, we would like to reduce this number further, but the return on investment will be very low if we want to go below 25% as it will require substantial investment on infrastructure.”
To achieve the target of 5% reduction in NRW annually, the City will start measuring water received from Umngeni-uThukela Water (UUW) at the custody transfer point (the point at which the City receives water from UUW).
Water meters older than 15 years in the City, are scheduled to be replaced.
The target is to replace 40 000 water meters annually.
He also said the plan is to reduce the amount of water consumption, from 266 litres per person per day, to about 218 litres per person per day.