By Moses Nyirenda
Lilongwe, August 24, Mana: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Lilongwe Water Board (LWB), Silli Mbewe has said that LWB has made positive progress in dealing with the problem of non-revenue water.
He made the remarks on Wednesday in Lilongwe during 7th Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) meeting on non-revenue water reduction which was organized by Lilongwe Water Board (LWB) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Mbewe said that so far they have made a progress of about two percent in the work of addressing the challenge of non revenue water.
“We have made two percent margins to some people it may look as a small progress but in the work of dealing with the issue of non revenue water this a very big achievement because when we have quantified the percentage it is about K1.4 billion which we have saved,” he said.
Mbewe added that the progress has made possible with support from JICA which has been providing equipment and knowledge to LWB through the project called ‘Strengthening the Capacity of Non-Revenue Water Reduction for Lilongwe Water Board’.
“With support from JICA, we have had so many capacity building initiatives in non revenue water management,
“In addition, we have received so much equipment specific and specialized in non revenue water reduction and some of these are leak detection materials and min excavators that allow us to move in hard to reach places when we want to respond to issues regarding pipe bursts,” he said.
The CEO commended customers contended support saying that they have played a greater role in reporting the cases of pipe bursts and vandalism of water supplying equipment to LWB.
JICA Chief Representative, Kazuhiro Tambara said JICA would continue to support LWB with technical expertise that would help to deal with the issue of non revenue water.
“We will keep on providing teams of Japanese experts to LWB who have best skills and experience in dealing with non revenue water,” he said.
The 7th JCC meeting was patronized by officials from various country’s water boards such; LWB, Blantyre Water Board, Central Region Water Board, Northern Region Water Board as well as officials from JICA Malawi among others.
