Plan to replace water meters older than 15 years across eThekwini
The City’s target is to replace 40 000 water meters annually.
ON Sunday, Durban mayor Cyril Xaba addressed the media on a Water Turnaround Strategy that the City hopes to implement over the next year.
His announcement comes amidst severe water supply issues in various areas across the Durban metro.
Among the 13 strategies outlined by Xaba, the City hopes to implement the replacement of water meters older than 15 years across the City.
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“Our target is to replace 40 000 water meters annually. We will replace all water meters that are older than 15 years in the City. The lifespan of a water meter is 15 years and if you run it beyond this point, the accuracy of water volumes measured drops. Coupled with this, we will ensure that we have enough stock of meters at our stores,” he said.
Xaba also touched on water theft and how illegal connections are also contributing significantly to water losses.
Non-revenue water (NRW) across eThekwini is sitting at 58% which means the City loses more than half of the water it purchases from the bulk supplier uMngeni-uThukela Water through bursts, water leaks, illegal connections and vandalism.
“Going forward, we are declaring zero tolerance on illegal connections. We have established technical teams and provided them with necessary tools of trade to clamp down on water theft. This drive will focus both on residential and business customers. To curb water losses, we have set a standard that all burst pipes must be responded to and repaired within 24 hours. Again, this will require us to increase our internal capacity including insourcing ward-based plumbers.
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“Proactive leak detection in curbing water losses is also being prioritised and we can only achieve this if we deploy technology on our infrastructure. We are also putting more emphasis on quality assurance on the work being done by our plumbers. From now on, when we send plumbers to do repair work, they must tell us what they have found by sending pre and post work pictures. Through our call centre and other mediums of communication, we will also provide feedback to our customers and check if the work has been done to their satisfaction,” he said.
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