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Mutare TMT Nuffic WOP

  • Zimbabwe
  • Zimbabwe - Mutare City Council
  • Finished 01-10-2020

In the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe near the border with Mozambique lies a city called Mutare with an estimated population of 200,000. In 2019, Mutare City Council (MCC) and VEI jointly submitted a Tailor Made Training (TMT)-proposal to develop knowledge, procedures and skills for MCC and and a project was approved.

The Mutare City Council (MCC) is responsible for the town’s water and sewerage services.

The main challenges were:

  1. Lack of NRW management (‘soft’) skills;
  2. Lack of Hydraulic modelling and pressure management skills;
  3. Low GIS skills;
  4. Lack of Operation and Maintenance scheduling skills and the absence of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for new connections, leak identification and repair;
  5. Lack of Financial Modelling skills to establish cost-reflective water tariffs that allows MCC to cover both its operational, maintenance and capital expenditures;
  6. Poor Quality control and optimization at the water treatment plant.

In 2019, given these challenges MCC and VEI jointly submitted a TMT-proposal in order to develop the knowledge, procedures and skills of its staff in some of the most critical areas listed above.

The three areas of the highest priority were:

1.         Non-Revenue Water (NRW);

2.         Hydraulic modelling and Geographic Information Systems (GIS);

3.         Water pressure management.

For each of these three areas a training session has been implemented during the period November 2019-September 2020.

On Friday the 23th of October the project evaluation took place. The evaluation indicated that the participants were grateful as they had gained some useful knowledge in pressure management, hydraulic modelling, NRW analysis, GIS and use of Excel software. The skills gained had been implemented in practice and the testimonies shared at the final evaluation workshop indicated that the following major outcomes had been realized. 80% Reduction in the frequency of pipe bursts in areas where pressure regulating devices (PRV) had been installed. Customer Database updating is in progress as GIS and excel spreadsheets are now used to identified gaps in the customer database. So far approximately 1000 properties have been added to the database which were initially not being billed.

The partnership was very successful and equipped Mutare with the necessary basics skills in the management of operations within a Water Utility. It is however critical that more operational investments and further capacity building resources be mobilized so that the outcomes realized so far in Mutare are enhanced and the SDG potential in Mutare is harnessed.

For more information please contact:

Robson Manatsa, Project Manager Zimbabwe

Trainees going through theoretical sessions

Project finished
Robson Manatsa

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