Service Level Benchmarking for Urban Water Supply, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management in Zimbabwe
Peer Review Annual Report – 2015
May 2016
SLB Peer Review Coordinating Committee
“Measure and Compare for Effective Service Delivery”
Contents
Contents 3
Foreword 5
Executive Summary 6
1. Introduction 13
1.1 Strategic Context 13
1.2 Objectives of Service Level Benchmarking 14
1.3 SLB Methodology Adopted in Zimbabwe 15
1.3.1 Inception 15
1.3.2 Participatory development of indicators 15
1.3.3 Data collection 15
1.3.4 Data analysis, validation and development of benchmarks 16
1.3.5 Introduction of a peer review mechanism 16
2. Peer Review Process – Setup and Activities for 2015 17
2.1 Definition 17
2.2 Governance Structure 17
2.2.1 Government 18
2.2.2 Urban Councils Association of Zimbabwe (UCAZ) 18
2.2.3 Peer Review Coordinating Committee (PRCC) 18
2.2.4 Peer Review Panels 19
2.3 SLB Activities for 2015 20
2.3.1 Activities and Key Deliverables 20
2.3.2 Peer Review Visits to Different Towns 21
3. Results from the 2015 Peer Review Process 25
3.1 Trend Analysis of 2014 SLB Data 25
3.1.1 Water Supply Indicators 25
3.1.2 Wastewater Management Indicators 30
3.1.3 Solid Waste Management Indicators 33
3.1.4 Summary of 2014 Indicators 36
3.2 Availability and Reliability of Data 38
3.3 Performance Ranking of Councils 40
3.4 Key Challenges Faced by Councils 41
3.5 Best Practices 41
3.6 Emerging Issues 42
3.7 Key Recommendations by Peer Reviewers 42
3.8 Performance Improvement Plans 43
3.9 Capacity Issues 44
3.10 Status of Assets 45
3.11 General Comments/Observations by reviewers 45
4. Lessons Learnt and Way Forward 46
4.1 Lessons Learnt 46
4.1.1 Process and Organisation 46
4.1.2 Understanding of Questionnaires 47
4.1.3 Documentation 47
4.2 Way forward 47
4.2.1 Format of Visits in 2016 47
4.2.2 Planned Activities and Meetings 48
4.2.3 Capacity Development 49
4.2.4 Look and Learn Visits 50
4.2.5 Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) 50
4.2.6 Handbooks and Documentation 50
5.0 Conclusion 51
Executive Summary
Background
The 2015 annual report is the third in a series of annual reports produced by the Service Level Benchmarking Coordination Committee (SLBCC). The purpose of the report is to disseminate and share lessons learned from the peer review process with our wider stakeholder groups, namely government, donors, development partners, urban communities. The services being benchmarked are water supply, wastewater and solid waste.
After its inception in 2012, the Service Level Benchmarking (SLB) and Peer Review Process (PRP) has registered considerable achievements in the management of water, wastewater and solid waste services in urban local authorities in Zimbabwe. The advent of the refugee crisis in Europe and the devastating Elnino induced droughts, epitomised by climate change realities continue to draw the attention of most governments and development partners away from Africa. This has resulted in low FDIs into the region, leading to de-industrialisation and constrained investments in infrastructure in general, and water and sanitation in particular. Despite the myriad of challenges facing the country and indeed the local government sector, tremendous progress had been and still is being made in delivering these much needed services to the citizenry. One such noble intervention is the attempt at benchmarking these three services and the review of progress against agreed benchmarks through a Peer Review mechanism.
Guided by the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-ASSET), the Service Level Benchmarking and Peer Review Process is an integral part of the national drive towards accountability, transparency and prosperity to the citizens of Zimbabwe. The Service Level Benchmarking process seeks to continuously monitor and improve service delivery in the WASH sector through accurate data reporting. The SLB Peer Review process is being funded and implemented by the World Bank, in partnership with the Government of Zimbabwe, Local Authorities and Zimbabwe Local Government Association (ZILGA).
Critical to the success of this process is the need to get stakeholders commitment and buy-in. This is achieved through structured engagement aimed at ensuring stakeholder participation throughout the process, from activity planning to monitoring, review and reporting. Pursuant to our objective of ensuring stakeholder involvement, a workshop for Town Clerks was held in Bulawayo from 26-27 January 2015. This was followed by a capacity building workshop for Mayors/Chairpersons on the 28 January 2015 in Bulawayo. These workshops provided a firm foundation for the success of the SLB programme. Obtaining buy-in and commitment at these two levels of local authority leadership was essential in order to avoid the previous year’s pitfalls. An additional benefit to this high level uptake of the programme was the assurance for its sustainability beyond the external financial and technical support from the World Bank where local authorities are expected to take over funding, coordination and management of the entire programme.
Similarly, a workshop for external stakeholders, including donors and development partners was held on 6th February 2015 to share the SLB 2014 annual report. As with the other two workshops, the annual report got a resounding reception. The donors and development partners were appreciative of the initiative despite the seemingly low progress in achieving the desired benchmarks. Despite the slow start, the results were general noticeable improvements in all the services. Most importantly was the catalytic nature of the project and its ability to foster vertically and horizontal learning among Local Authority peers. In addition, the SLB process was accepted as a more objective and scientific way of monitoring and evaluating service delivery performance by local authorities through self-assessments and peer assessments.
In order to mainstream the project into the overall WASH sector initiatives and to ensure that there is no duplication of efforts as well as funding with other partners, the annual report was also shared with the WASH Urban Rehabilitation Technical Committee, it being a sub-committee of the National Coordination Unit (NCU) of the National Action Committee (NAC). This was critical in order to harmonise interventions across the sector and to ensure that the impact of the interventions is felt by a larger population. Likewise, the report and the lessons thereto were cascaded to UCAZ officers’ forums such as the Town Treasurers Forum and the Town Engineers Forum.
This report reviews the progress of the SLB process to date and gives a summary of the results of the Peer Review process of 2015. Unlike in the previous reports, the results for the 2015 peer review process show that there is an improvement in service delivery across all Local Authorities. Factors that contributed to this improvement are the notable investments in water and sanitation assets, mainly by development partners during the period. Development partners such as GIZ, World Bank, UNICEF and AfDB carried out interventions aimed at improving the asset base for water and sanitation services delivery. We also noted the contribution made by the Government of Zimbabwe through its PSIP to finance outstanding water and sanitation infrastructure in some local authorities. These interventions, though far inadequate given the magnitude of the problems in the sector, did make some noticeable impact on service delivery.
Despite the limited financial base, most councils did take steps to address some areas of concern, especially those that did not require huge capital funding. A change of systems and attitudes was also reflected by the movement of indicators. As this was a third round of data collection, some of the movements in indicators could also be due to a tightening of the data gathering systems as officials became more conscious of the need to keep proper and accurate records. Some councils carried out property surveys and this, in a way, helped them to improve revenue collection by identifying properties that were missing from their databases. Data availability and completeness was generally good. However, reliability of some of the data remained questionable due to statistics that could not be scientifically verified.
Most Local Authorities have now embraced the separation of Operation Maintenance (O&M) in their budgets. However there is need to ensure adherence to this practice during resource allocation and during expenditure. Generally, Local Authorities were better prepared for the review process than before and good team work was exhibited throughout the reviews.
Summary Results on Indicators Based on 2014 Data
Water Supply Indicators
Data on water supply in the table below shows some slight improvement. However, there is need for some local authorities to separate industrial, commercial and institutional consumption which tends to push consumption figures upward. Reliability of data has significantly improved as compared to the 2013 data. Like in the previous year, there was very minimal investment in infrastructure mainly due to the depressed economic environment. However, to a greater extent, local authorities have managed to maintain the existing infrastructure in a sound condition to maintain the current service levels.
Non-revenue water is still high in most councils. There is need for investment in metering installations and replacement, and also in leak detection. In addition, zonal metering may also improve tracking and accounting for water losses, as these will be confined to smaller geographical zones. GIS uptake among local authorities is very low, despite its costs being moderate. Individual local authorities need to come up with strategies for the reduction of NRW, which is above 50% for the majority of the councils. Data on water production shows that there is adequate water being produced, however, at the consumer end water accounted for is very low. In some instances there is conflicting data on water produced and continuity of water supply.
When it comes to the quality of water supplied, councils appear to be tempering with data, especially when quality is bad. The main weakness is that councils are reporting good results and not testing all relevant key parameters. The testing of the quality of drinking water right from the treatment plant, intermediate points (reservoirs and pumping stations), and consumer end need to be tightened and guided by clear protocols. Health Officers should come up with a monitoring protocol for quality of water. Periodic independent water quality testing is highly recommended for all councils. Equally significant is the need to standardise testing parameters across councils.
When it comes to tariff structure and tariff setting, there is no uniformity among councils. Some councils are charging very high tariffs while others are charging uneconomic tariffs. There is a tendency to over-charge consumers when there is no cost build up to justify the tariff because tariffs are largely estimates. There is need for a standard method of calculating the cost built up to a tariff structure. Such justification is essential for Local Authorities to gain the confidence of rate payers. This might result in more revenue as resistance to pay is overcome by being transparent in the way tariffs are determined.
Redressing customer complaints and paying attention to customer needs is an area requiring attention in most Local Authorities. While there is evidence of use of multiple mechanisms by which consumers can make their complaints, there is lack of empirical evidence of how, when and by who the complaints were resolved. In addition, registers do not have provision for the complainant to endorse to vouch that the complaint had been satisfactorily attended to. There is need for local authorities to daft a model complaints register which councils can adopt to suit their context.
The table below summarises the councils’ performance on the water supply indicators.
Wastewater Management Indicators
A summary of results on wastewater management is shown in the table below. These results show that the collection of sewage for treatment is still very low. It is evident that sewage is being collected from sources but most of it is not reaching wastewater treatment plants. This is revealed by a high treatment capacity in relation to the incoming sewage. It is also important to ensure that flows at sewage treatment plants are recorded and that the plants themselves are well-maintained. The testing of sewage seems to have improved and this needs to be encouraged for current and future decision making.
Poor wastewater management had resulted in councils paying heavy fines to EMA due to their continued pollution of the environment. While most councils are able to give accurate figures pertaining to water produced and pumped into the distribution system, the same cannot be said with certainity for wastewater. Most sewage treatment plants do not have working meters to measure amount of flow. It follows therefore that most of the figures are based on estimates. This casts doubt on both reliabilty of the figures and accuracy of the data supplied. Furthermore, there is very little recycling of wastewater being done. This is an area where councils are lossing huge opportunities for maximising usage of wastewater resources (water, energy and nutrients) including revenue generation.
Solid Waste Management Indicators
A summary of results on solid waste management is given in the table below. These results show an appreciable effort by councils although the general impression in the country is that solid waste is not being properly managed. Littering is now the main challenge which is being worsened by the continual sprouting of vending sites in most towns. Most councils have invested in the acquisition of refuse collection equipment, although a lot still needs to be done. However, there is very minimal recycling/reuse of solid waste materials and lack of scientific refuse disposal systems. Most councils are still a long way from developing compliant landfills, as prescribed by the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), as these require appropriate land and huge capital investments. To date, only Norton and Bulawayo have managed to construct landfills as prescribed by EMA standards. However, it is encouraging to note that most councils are actually seized with this issue to the extent that more councils may be having compliant landfills in the not so distant future.
Weight of solid waste has also been largely estimates as most local authorities do not have access to weighbridges. The challenge might soon be over as councils are beginning to procure self-weighing refuse trucks, a development that will improve accuracy of data for future peer reviews.