Mombasa county is introducing policies to regulate private water tankers, borehole operators, exhaust operators, shallow well operators and private water refilling points.
This is to address illegal water connections and health concerns, Mombasa Water Supply and Sanitation Company managing director Abdirahim Farah said.
Farah said there are concerns that the county is losing a lot of revenue to water 'cartels' and illegal water connections.
There are hundreds of private companies, which sell water to Mombasa residents in every estate within the region – some are not registered entities.
Mowassco management has come up with six regulations that are at the board level for approval to regulate exhausters, water bowsers, borehole operators, private tankers and all those that deal with the supply of water services.
“They are all going to be regulated. They have to be licensed and regulated because of concerns about hygiene and illegal water connections. We must know the source of their water, and they must all comply with the standards that are set,” Farah said.
The MD said currently Mombasa , which has more than 1.2 million people, is going through a lot of challenges in offering adequate tap water to the households.
The demand for water in county is around 220,000 cubic metres per day, but currently the region receives between 30,000 and 35,000 cubic metres per day.
“That is around 17 per cent meeting our demand. It's a struggle, that is why we employ a rationing programme to make sure that every part is factored in,” Farah said.
However, the county still loses about 50 per cent of the 35,000 cubic metres per day.
The water is lost through leakages and illegal water connections.
“We are losing water through illegal connections. Which has been there for quite a while. We can also call it water theft. And of course, there are these massive leakages that we continue to address as they occur. Because the infrastructure is also quite old,” he said.
He said the water shortages being experienced within the county have caused a lot of anxiety among the residents of the region.
“This is what creates a lot of anxiety. Who is benefiting from these losses? Is it internal sabotage? Is it our workers working with unscrupulous business people there to deny the people of Mombasa? For sure, this is a loss to the company,” he said.
To curb impersonation of their staff, Mowassco has issued smart identity cards to all its staff. The cards have a QR code which can be scanned to check if the details are accurate.
“These are people, maybe at one point, who used to work for this company. Either as employed full-time, or as casual, or as a contract, but some of them no longer work with us,” he said.
To curb illegal connectivity, Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir, last year launched the Smart Water Metre Technology.
“We want to achieve two main agendas. Number one is to make sure that consumers are billed accurately. Because there have been cases whereby you have not received water for a while, yet the meter has recorded reading,” Farah said.
“So in a nutshell, you are paying for what you have not consumed. So smart metering will now address that. Because it will give us real-time movement of the commodity."
The Mowassco boss added that the smart metres also help them to track water distribution.
“We have employed something called a DMA, a district metering area. This helps us know exactly how much quantity of our product went in a certain area, and how much we have billed. We can also pinpoint exactly where we are losing water,” he said.