ICA Organizes Workshop on Reducing Water Losses
30 October 2013
The ICA organized a workshop titled “Tackling Non-Revenue Water – Innovative Mechanisms for Increased Efficiency of Utilities” at the IWA Development Congress in Nairobi, Kenya. The workshop took place on 16th October 2013 and was attended by approximately 90 representatives of utilities, development partners, NGOs, regional institutions and private sector.
The workshop served as a platform for discussing the economic advantage of increasing efficiencies -with targeted measures to reduce physical and commercial losses in the water sector. In presentations, the on-going work of the ICA to identify investment opportunities in non-revenue-water reduction and respective innovative financing structures were discussed. The African Water Association (AfWA) shared insights and lessons-learned from their Non-Revenue-Water reduction project with USAID.
To add to this work, utilities from Kenya (EMBU and NYERI) and Tanzania (MOSHI) provided insights from their on-going non-revenue-water programs. Finally the private sector, represented by the Israeli company, MIYA shared their best practices in working together with utilities in South Africa, Latin American and Asia to reduce water losses and increase the economic returns.
Discussions during this workshop – with participants from various donor agencies, development partnerships, utilities and the private sector re-affirmed the critical need to reduce of water losses. The workshop also helped surface the enormous [negative] impact climate change is having on water facilities. The main messages from the workshop are:
- Increasing efficiencies and supporting the financial sustainability of utilities is high on the political and developmental agenda.
- Sustainable programs to reduce water losses should envisage mid – to long term measures and not focus on short term efficiency gains
- Dedicated [senior] management as well as an educated, knowledgeable staff is critical in the implementation of sustainable water loss reduction activities and interventions.
Category: Water