Water Revenue Management, Process Improvement and Capacity Building

Nov 2012 - Nov 2016 (4 Years)

Project Introduction & Objectives

 

PCMC, being an early adopter of water conservation program through effective water measurement, installed water meters in each and every household across the entire city (around 2009-10). Due to lack of capacity and proper policy framework, this system fell into disuse and citizens were either not getting billed or were facing a lot of issues due to incorrect and inflated bills. Over a few years, this resulted in a lack of faith in this system by citizens and there was a lot of political influence to do away with the volumetric measurement of water and go back to fixed bill system which was easier to maintain and has no relation with amount of water consumed.

We analyzed the entire system end to end and provided the city commissioner with a report on the issues, which included

  • Spreading awareness among citizens and ULB staff on why the objective of water billing is not just an increase in water sales and it should be treated as an important step towards water management and conservation. If it cannot be measured and quantified, it cannot be managed properly

  • Re-installation of over 30,000 meters which fell into disuse and were either completely out of order or were malfunctioning

  • Throw away most of the legacy database as it was highly inaccurate and build another one from scratch by a detailed survey of each and every consumer across city (Population 17 lakh including remote areas)

  • Develop a well-trained, highly skilled field team which will record water meter readings, take meter picture and its health status every quarter and upload that information on central server

  • Develop and maintain a highly accurate software system which will gather data from regular field visits and generate accurate bills

  • Develop an infrastructure for regular delivery of these bills and notices on non-compliance

  • Develop an anomaly detection system which will generate alerts and warnings through constant monitoring of consumption patterns of each and every household. These warnings will notify in the event of water theft, water leakages or an incorrect meter reading capture event

  • Develop a “ Smart Bill Correction System” and policies related to it. It should be smart enough to require very little user input and perform most of the computation itself for higher accuracy, less human intervention and speeding up of the process was needed urgently as there were a lot of pending disputed bills

  • A major drive for correction of around 40,000 bills was needed, to convert those disputed cases into satisfied and paying customers

  • A customer support staff which is well trained in above systems and capable in communications had to be deployed at every nodal office across the city for dispute resolutions, information dissemination and to support and train the government staff

  • Arrange several PR campaigns to increase customer’s trust in the system and increase their awareness about water conservation through measurement

  • Find and regularize all unauthorized water consumers

  • Find and regularize all authorized but non-metered consumers

Impact

 

Revenue

PCMC was stuck in a cycle of not being able to bill their customers properly and hence not being able to collect revenue or increase water rates. As soon as we resolved above mentioned issues, there revenues soared from Rs. 17-18 cr. per year to Rs. 35-37 cr. per year. In addition to that, finally in 2019 the officials of water department have been able to convince the political leaders of the city to increase their age old water rates to bring them at par with other major cities, this should shortly bring their revenue to approx. Rs. 100 cr. per year as soon as the new rates are applied. 

Reduction in NRW

NRW or Non Revenue Water is a result of water leakages through distribution pipes, water theft, consumption of water by unauthorized consumers, non-metered consumers, faulty meters and non-paying consumers.

We found and reported around 40,000 missing and faulty water meters, 15,000 unauthorized consumers and developed policies and software to regularize these consumers and helped them get and install new water meters.

We expanded our operations to extreme ends of the city and started billing consumers from remote and rural areas on the fringes of municipal corporation. This brought an unexpected stream of revenue for government.

Women Empowerment

To develop a team of capable and trustworthy meter inspectors, we approached several groups of women through “bachatgat”, which are small self help micro financing initiatives for under-privileged social groups.

These were all women who belonged to a marginalized section of society and due to lack of education, skill and ages beyond 40, had almost no viable employment opportunities. We provided extensive training to them and in a few months, developed a team of around 80, all-female water warriors who were ready to take on the challenge of improving the entire city while earning a good and stable income. We have seen them grow and their lives improving markedly in these last 7-8 years. Training empowered these women and gave them an opportunity to send their kids to better school and not become solely reliant on their husband’s income, a lot of them are now primary wage earners of their households.

Customer Satisfaction and Dispute Resolution

PCMC had a lot of pending disputes due to incorrect, inflated bills given to customers, these bills showed up in the accounts department as approx 45-50 cr. pending income in revenue/demand which was never collected because they were just inflated figures due to incorrect bills and there were no policies or methods to correct them. This was a major drag for all revenue collectors as revenue always seemed to pale in comparison of this huge pending demand and was also aggravating affected customers everyday, many of them had resorted to send legal notices.

We created an internal committee to oversee this, developed policy framework, an automated bill correction software and started a major drive of bill correction. Within a matter of 1 year, most of which went into gaining various approvals, we corrected around 40,000 historical bills, reduced an inflated demand of approx. 45 crores from pending account, brought these customers under regular process and started their revenue stream.