KARACHI, June 12: The Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) has recommended that the role of retail water service providers in the city should be separated from the role of bulk water suppliers or, as an alternative, they should be managed and operated by two different business units of the same organization.
Jica, which is undertaking a study aimed at developing the city’s water supply and sewerage systems master plan in its Progress Report 2, known as the main report, states that the aim of this role separation is to enable the service provider to provide customer-focused, efficient water and waste-water services to its customers.
This requires the insulation of the service provider from external interference in the micromanagement aspects of its operation, including the employment of staff, disciplining workers for poor performance, offering rewards and promotions based on good performance, handling of payment defaulters and illegal connections, recovery of arrears, etc, it adds.
Strongly suggesting that the retail water service in the city should be managed on a full cost-recovery basis with sound business and commercial principles, the report says that experience indicates that as long as the service provider is dependent on government subsidies, it will be continuously subjected to interference in the day-to-day management of services in the technical execution of projects.
Expecting that the separation of roles will enhance the overall efficiency in the operation and maintenance of the water supply system, it says that since the KWSB in the past had been the only organization responsible for management and operation of the entire water supply system, there had been no absolute necessity for measuring the flows at key strategic locations in the system. However, with the separation of the role of the bulk water supplier from the role of retail service provider, there will be an absolute necessity for accurately measuring flows at the locations where the two role players will interface each other.
Highlighting the goals of role separation, the study says that an institutional framework is in place where a competent service provider can provide water supply and waste-water services on a full cost-recovery basis with sound business and commercial projects.
Discussing the strategies aimed at role separation, it says these include that all stakeholders should agree to the separation of roles and on the method of the separation carry out a study to identify necessary change to the existing laws, ordinances and regulations and draft detailed legal provisions to bring the separation into effect, besides proposing such changes for approval of legislators.
Mentioning that the KWSB had divided the entire city into four zones, it says that has been done mainly for administrative purposes and from the hydraulic point of view, each zone is not completely isolated from others and the tariffs collected by the KWSB are common to all of these zones while cantonments, the DHA and other bulk consumers are managed by the utility’s bulk transmission department and from the administrative point of view, they are not included in any of these four zones.
The same department, it adds, is responsible for the operation and maintenance of water trunk mains that are passing through these distribution zones.
Though the Karachi Strategic Development Plan-2020, also known as the Master Plan, has recommended that the water and waste-water services in the city should be managed and operated by each town, the Jica study says it will not be a practical solution at least in the foreseeable future because of a number of factors including (a) the complexity of the existing water distribution system in which a single water trunk main is supplying a number of towns, whereas many towns are supplied through more than one water trunk main, and (b) the significant economic disparities between towns, making it difficult for some towns to cross-subsidize tariffs from the rich to the poor because of their weak revenue bases.
The report, however, recommends that the city be divided into three distinct hydraulic zones, each separated from the others by the two major rivers in the city – Malir and Lyari rivers – saying that the rationale behind this is that there is only a limited number of existing water mains and sewers that have been laid across these rivers and they can easily be located for the installation of isolation valves or bulk flow meters.
Moreover, the separation of hydraulic zones by the rivers would allow more appropriate approaches for the planning of sewerage and storm-water drainage systems then by the administrative boundaries of the towns, it adds.