Zimpapers Logo

Qhubani Moyo
A response by Godwin Phiri of Director of INTCHA.com and a member of a 16-member civil society grouping against prepaid water meters all but confirmed my original title that “civil society is misleading residents on the issue of prepaid water meters”. The article in your sister paper the Sunday News on January 24, 2014 under the heading “Dr Q you are wrong on prepaid water meters” attempts to, with failure, make a critical analysis of and response to my original arguments. The headless and spineless article which fails the basic test of logic and syntax construction works more to expose the level of bankruptcy that characterises the coalition of the 16 civil society organisations than explain why this writer is wrong.

Besides failing the basic principles of practical criticism which an O-Level English literature student would have done better, the article presents lots of incoherencies on the understanding of the policy formulation and implementation processes. It actually meanders and makes conclusions that all but confirm that the coalition of the 16 civil society organisations has an ulterior motive and agenda which goes beyond advocacy on water issues. I have doubts that the display of ignorance and the deliberate tailor-making of the truth by a coalition of 16 organisations could just be a matter of mistake.

The deliberate re-engineering of the truth points at a bigger and broader and probably aimed at using the issue of prepaid water meters as a tool for political organisation. It is well known and well documented that most of the organisations in this coalition as well as some individuals were the key players in using civil society platforms and resources to do political commissariat work for the MDC-T. It is thus suspicious that the same organisations are now masquerading as the liberators of the residents against “diabolic policy” proposals when they actually are the ones who encouraged and ensured that people of Bulawayo vote for the political party that believes in policies like prepaid water meters.

Some of these organisations spend so much time, money, resources and energy in political campaigns encouraging the people of Bulawayo to vote for the MDC-T and now that they have broken ranks with them and now that donor funding has changed allegiance, they all want us to see like them. What they seem not to know is that when one makes a political choice in the ballot, by extension they are making a policy choice. So when some of these civil society organisations campaigned for the residents to vote for the MDC-T, they actually encouraged them to embrace prepaid water meters because it is the MDC-T led council which is running Bulawayo thanks to their campaigns.

Before I move on to highlight why it is even more urgent now to install prepaid water meters, it would be prudent to deal with some deliberate tailoring of the truth by civil society coalition. The first is that the illusion is that the demonstration is a “people’s project”. The attempt to widen and spread the base beyond  the 16 civil society organisations to give an impression that this is a mass movement is a fallacy that the 16 civil society organisations should rid themselves  of.

It is imaginary and delusionary that a grouping of 16 organisations most who are commercial NGOs, some who are remote controlled for political reasons and some who will do anything that comes their way because they have nothing to do cannot constitute a people’s movement. It is just all but a grouping of a few interests and in their imaginary world the 16 civil society organisation should not see themselves as deriving their mandate from the masses to constitute a “people’s project”.

The second fallacy is a deliberate and outright misrepresentation of facts regarding success of prepaid water meters in some parts of the world. The civil society organisations tailor-make the truth and deliberately and thus forget that prepaid water meters are actually widely used in South Africa, as well as in countries such as Brazil, the United States, the Philippines, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Brazil, Nigeria. In his article he singled 3 countries namely South Africa, Ghana and Ireland yet in reality in those countries the prepaid water meters are in place. While public records will reveal that in South Africa civil society groups such as the Anti Privatisation Forum (APF)  mobilised communities to resist the installation of prepaid water and electricity meters, sometimes destroying or bypassing the meters.

In 2008, the High Courts in South Africa, in a case brought by the APF and affiliated groups, declared the use of prepaid water meters illegal, and raised the amount of water that the state needed to supply free to users. On appeal by the State to the Constitutional Court, this judgment was subsequently overturned, and prepaid meters continue to be used in South Africa.

In Ghana, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) actually approved a Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing backed plan to allow Ghana Water Company to introduce prepaid water meters by the end of last year.

In Ireland, prepaid water meters are operational and were introduced for homes that are connected to a public water supply or to public wastewater services. Irish Water, the new national water utility, administers the water charges. In all these countries which the writer pointed out as not having worked out, they have become a very useful avenue of improving cash flows and thus improve service delivery.

While it cannot be disputed that all policy implementation processes are met with teething problems, it is folly to assume that those can be permanent and thus warrant reversal of the policy. Policy implementation is affected by the environment and it differs from one place to the other. Clearly teething problems in one area cannot be used as a measure of how things will be done within a different environment. If anything, the teething problems in some areas like in KwaMashu in Durban where the resistance by residents led to the outbreak of cholera should be used more as a lesson of ensuring how the local policy implementation process does not lead to the same results and not as a way of stopping such a progressive policy. So clearly the civil society organisations once again are found tailor making the truth to suit their agenda by failing to acknowledge a publicly known fact that the prepaid water meters are operational and success stories in improving cash flows and service delivery in the countries they mentioned in their response.

In their response civil society rightly points out that the council is allocating 5,000 litres of free water to the residents per month and they also indicate that most households actually use less than that allocation and as such council’s proposals to install prepaid water meters is an attempt to solve a non-existent problem. What civil society then does not say is that in fact there are many other consumers who use more than the free allocation and fail to pay timeously for their usage and thus expose council to cash flow problems. Civil society speaks of the telling tales that they saw of glaring poverty in some areas that they went for their door-to-door campaigns and that such impoverished people would not be able to make payments for prepaid  water.

While I sympathise with those people and also acknowledging that while the government policies should be pro-poor as they rightly point out, that should not create a culture of entitlement where people feel they are obliged to get services for free. If those poor people want water delivered to their households whose money do they want to use to have the water delivered to them? We cannot encourage a welfare mentality where people want to get services because they are poor. But even in their own admission and another sign of attempts to mislead residents, the civil society organisations state that 5,000 litres is allocated to each household free of charge a month and that this is fairly enough for many households. What complaints are they making about the prepaid water meters being anti-poor people because those poor vulnerable people who have no use for some additional water beyond the 5,000 litres have enough water for the month free of charge.

Effectively the council proposals speak to improving not revenue collection but cash flows by making sure that payments are paid in advance for the consumption beyond allocations. I want to stress here that it is a blatant lie by civil society organisations that taps will run dry and cause  cholera if there are prepaid meters because everyone in the city will start with a free allocation of 5,000 litres which they can manage and only prepay for their projected consumption beyond the free allocation. I hope this is loud and clear to the civil society organisations and their public misleading crusade.

The attempt to give an impression that water is a human right and thus an entitlement without consideration of the limitations boggles the mind. I doubt that civil society organisations are ignorant on this one, this one they know very well and they are being deliberately mischievous and deliberately misleading the residents.

The constitution speaks of water as a human right but sets clear that government will progressively move towards achieving this right subject to Section 86 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which speaks and outlines the limitations of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Fundamental freedoms and human rights actually come with a cost and therefore with a cost which makes them subject to limitation and delivery only when possible. I am sure even in communist societies there is a cost to the attainment of fundamental rights.

What civil society also wants us to believe is that they are in partnership and solidarity with poor and marginalised people of Cowdray Park without explaining how those residents found themselves in the situation that they are in. A quick perusal of the construction of Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle will tell you that it was a government initiative to resettle people after the Murambatsvina operation. Those who were displaced from the illegal settlements had to be settled somewhere and the government constructed houses and provided land.

The settlements were done without any servicing which meant there were no roads, sewer systems and water connections. The stands had been allocated to different private companies which later came together under the Housing Consortium and worked in servicing of parts of the area. However there were some gross anomalies and lack of accountability in the process leading to claims of corruption and unjust enrichment of Consortium which saw it fail to service the stands. When the government handed over the project to the Bulawayo City Council, there was a proposal which was agreed that each household would pay council $50 a month which will go towards servicing of the stands. As the situation stands most of the residents have deliberately chosen not to pay but expect council to continue providing services.

Meanwhile, the council continues to allocate water through communal taps for free to the residents. The costs of delivery of water to those residents have remained a burden to the council and there are difficulties in monitoring the consumption pattern per each household. The council has thus been allocating lots of water to the residents but unable to tell who consumes what and who should pay how much. The prepaid water meters in Garikai are thus designed to ensure that residents of the area have monitored consumption per each household.

This means that each household will start the month with an allocation of 5,000 litres for free and can thus budget it well if they have no capacity or desire to spend more than that. The prepaid water meters are designed to ensure that once a household has consumed beyond their free monthly allocation of 5,000 litres the subsequent consumption is billed at 75 cents per 1,000 litres. A quick calculation will reveal that since most households consume an average of about 9,000 litres per month, residents can prepay water for about $3. This way council will be able to know and plan on consumption by people of that area.

But again if the residents were to prepay on the basis of the projected $3 a month and with the city having about 140,000 billed households, it means that council will be able to get a steady cash flow of around $5 million a year and there would be no excuse for poor water service delivery.

But for civil society to sing the slogan an injury to one is an injury to all and failing to actually assist residents see the important value of prepaid meters to an extent of broad daylight information manipulation that taps will go dry when council allocates 5,000 litres for free which are enough for moderate consumption is shameful to say the least. Civil society then says maybe council is trying to solve a non-existent problem, the question is if there is no problem, why did they go on top of a mountain preaching anti prepaid water meters if there is no issue. Certainly there is a problem and the problem is that of cash flow due to non-payment by residents for consumption beyond the allocated free litres of water per month.

What some of the civil society organisations in the coalition of 16 cannot dispute is that their years of cohabitation with the councillors and their role in campaigning for the MDC-T made them sleep on duty. I am curious to know why some of these civil society organisations see the issue of prepaid water meters as urgent now when it was actually passed by the MDC-T council in Bulawayo in 2013 and they went on to form part of their campaign and thus gave them a victory fully aware that their victory meant that they would implement the prepaid water meters policy.

An answer to that question will come in length in my next instalment which will focus on why the split of the MDC-T has left some civil society organisations in a quandary as they are remote controlled by some politicians and their move to the MDC-T Renewal means they should move with them and thus attack anything that is MDC-T.

This situation will undoubtedly lead to serious challenges of service delivery. I  have left the names of such civil society organisations hanging but know that they will respond soon and we take the debate further from there.

Meanwhile, civil society organisations in the pre-paid water consortium need to take stock and see whether they are all genuinely bound by a similar cause or they are naively assisting a political design they might not necessarily believe in. Equally, residents need to look at the anti-prepaid water meters with suspicion and be wary of civil society elements that are deliberately misleading them for political gains. Whatever the arguments by the 16 member civil society coalition, prepaid water meters are an urgent necessity and council should move in and install them without further delay.

Dr Qhubani Moyo is policy and political analyst from Bulawayo East Constituency. He is contactable on [email protected].