Why water meters are not working in Nigeria – George Garbi, MD, Ortech

Imo Experience with LAISON Metering Solutions

The Imo State Water and Sewerage Corporation is presently faced with challenges of Billings and poor revenue collections as their customers are billed manually on monthly flat rate tariff; with our Customers complaining and quarreling with the Corporation on high tariffs and being made to pay for water not supplied. We have Customers who delay payments and some not paying at all with high historical debts as our collection efficiency was about 5%. These are making us not to break even or make profits from the cost of water production.

We also have problem of water wastages at the houses of our customers due to faulty taps weak pipes that are always bursting; leading to leakages with no serious commitments to repairing them or even report same to the Corporation as they know that their billing is fixed. The Corporation has found itself loosing great revenues due to these sources of non – revenue water (NRW) and loosing water pressure making our water supply not able to reach most of our customers; hereby our water supply operation is badly affected. While some of our Customers see our water supply as a social tool from government and should be free.

Debts continue to increase with no hope of collecting them, these challenges made us to start a Radio advocacy program to educate our Customers on the cost of water production and distribution and the need to make payments to enable us serve them well.

The Corporation was worried and started to seek for solution from LAISON METERING LIMITED, ABUJA through the Country Sales Manager who visited the Corporation and introduce LAISON Meters and their Solutions they offer. He also informed us about their Pilot Projects, whereby they will give us some Meters at no cost to the Corporation for installation at our desired locations; for us to observe the operational efficiency of these Meters in solving the problems of Billings, Non – Revenue Water, delayed, none payments and historical debts from our Customers. The Corporation accepted to give it a trial.

This made LAISON METERING LIMITED, ABUJA to send us their Pilot Projects Questionnaire, which we answered and send back to their headquarter in China; they sent us Memoranda of Understanding (MOU); which we completed, signed and returned back to LAISON headquarter in China.

After this, LAISON METERING LIMITED, ABUJA sent us 20 LoRa Prepaid Water Meters and requested from us to give them an ideal date and time for an online training on the installation of the Meters and the operations and management of the Meters to generate Tokens using their Software. The Corporation gave them date and time for the training and we were trained.

The Corporation staffs after the training installed the Meters at our desired locations.

The results from these locations where these Meters are installed have been great; initially they complained about the tariffs from these Meters. We held meetings with them and jointly agreed on acceptable tariff, after which we now enjoy the best relationship with the Customers; because they are now willingly to pay without us prompting them to do so.

We also observed water wastages and leakages in those locations where the Meters are installed have drastically reduced as Customers are now more disciplined wit water consumption or usage. The Pilot Projects have improved the revenue profile of the Corporation tremendously.

These Meters have improved customer confidence and willingness to pay. The objectives of the Pilot Projects were achieved in the piloted area. We look forward to installing LAISON Meters to every household in our coverage areas.