POLITICS

Helen Zille installs WMD in home

Statement issued by the Mayor of Cape Town March 10 2009

WATER MANAGEMENT DEVICE INSTALLED IN MAYOR'S HOME

Today I have had one of the City of Cape Town 's new water management devices installed in my home.

The City is currently installing these water management devices in households around Cape Town to provide them with a specific daily amount of water, at the normal flow rate.

We are doing this to save water, to help residents avoid running up huge bills they cannot pay (usually because of leaks), and to ensure we are able viably to provide every member of the public with access to clean water, as is their constitutional right.

We spend R310 million per year on free water for residents. We provide a minimum of 44 litres per person per day, based on an estimated average household of eight people. National legislation requires a minimum of 25 litres per person per day. Where more people live in a household, we increase the amount of free water accordingly.

This ensures that households receive their free 6000 litres of water per month, and it also allows them to increase this to an additional amount according to what they commit to paying.

For residents on our indigency database, the free amount of water is increased to 10 000 litres per month.

The water management device is set to switch on at a fixed time every morning and will only switch off once the household has used its set quota of water for the day.

If households use less than their quota in a day the amount not used will be carried over to the next day. For example, if only 250 litres is used in one day, the balance of 100 litres will be carried over to the next day giving a total of 450 litres for that day.

We will replace the current 'trickle system' used for debt management with these devices.

As a further incentive for people registered on our indigency database to use water responsibly, the City will write off any water bill arrears they may have if they remain within their quota and pay for any extra water use for a sustained period of 6 months.

To keep on providing free water services, we have to reduce unpaid debts and wastage. So far we have installed 30 000 water management devices free of charge, after consultation with owners, and fixed leaks free of charge in many of the homes where they have been installed. This has already resulted in a saving of 156 000 000 litres of water worth R519 000, every month.

It is irresponsible for the ANC and COSATU to smear the City's roll-out of these devices as an 'anti-poor' measure. We do not force these devices on anyone. We only install them if home owners consent to having them installed.

The ANC and COSATU have also wrongly compared our water management devices to Johannesburg 's pre-paid water meters. In fact, payment is not required before water is supplied through our water management devices. There have been cases where tampering with these devices has led to their shutting down, and some isolated cases of malfunction or battery failure. But customers can report these outages to the City's customer call centre on 0860 10 30 54, or to our new customer SMS line on 31373, and we have a team on standby 24 hours a day to fix any problems. There are also cases where leaks in people's homes have caused the daily quota to run out quickly, leaving them without water for the rest of the day. But the whole point is to help residents detect and fix these kinds of leaks, and so avoid huge debts.

Statement issued by the Mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille March 10 2009

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email service