11 Jan 2022

Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) will not be introducing prepaid smart metres anytime soon.

The Corporations’ director for strategy and corporate affairs Mr Peter Sedingwe said in an interview that the prepayment solution initiative was still at an assessment stage and the smart meters programme, together with a strategy that would drive it were still to be finalised.

“WUC has not yet identified any local manufacturers and that will be done when the right time comes,” he said.

He further said the corporation was not aware that some of its customers had connected smart metres in their residences and malls to address some of the billing problems.

Nonetheless, Mr Sedingwe noted that smart meters were beneficial as they automatically gave precise and timely water consumption readings.

He said the smart meters could help in resolving billing disputes and meter reading costs as well as reduce waste, improve billing and cash flow for the corporation, detect leaks and improve operational process inefficiencies.

Mr Thebe Johannes, co-director at Leeroy Systems, a local manufacturer said their smart meters were tailored to manage, monitor and enable users to pay their water bills in flexible terms through a digital platform.

He said their business based at Block 8 industrial was one of few pathfinders in the digitalisation drive, a concept prioritised by the government to improve service delivery efficiency in the public and private sector.

Mr Johannes said the meters were already available in the local market and served industrial, commercial and residential segments of the population.

He said the technology could work as a standalone or be used alongside the conventional piston metres, normally provided by WUC when connecting a tap.

“If adopted, the technology will significantly reduce widespread water losses as a result of undetected underground water leaks due to pipe bursts, as well as speed up collection of money owned to WUC,” he said.

He said the intelligent metres were able to detect and report notorious hidden underground pipe leaks as well as wall buried pipe leaks, which contributed to massive water loss and huge water bills.

He reasoned that by adopting a system such as theirs, WUC would be able to have customers gradually pay their outstanding bills without having to cut their water supply.

“Untimely, WUC would be owing customers’ water, not customers owing WUC as it is the case,” he said.

Mr Johannes said the system would be a great relief for the country as it would do away with complaints of wrong and exorbitant billing from customers.

Apart from addressing customer complaints, Leeroy Systems’s smart water metering technology also provide ‘detective services’ by reporting any tempering with the meter, which can happen when there is an illegal connection.

The smart meters are already in use in many government and private premised and have been embraced by multi-residential property owners, due to their ability to split metering. Ends