Poor households to get free water

Shinovene Immanuel

CABINET has approved plans for the government to subsidise water costs to about 84 000 “poor” households by next year.

This decision follows a proposal presented to Cabinet last month by the Minister of Agriculture, Water and Forestry John Mutorwa as part of the National Development Plans (NDPs) and the Water Supply and Sanitation Policy (WSASP-2008).

In the memorandum, Mutorwa requested Cabinet to approve the implementation strategy for water supply subsidy and the operational plan for subsidising access to water in Namibia specifically targeting the poor living in both urban and rural areas.

Fifty-six town and regional councils were consulted regarding the water strategy whose key partners are the Namibia Water Corporation, the Ministry of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development and their counterparts at Agriculture, Water and Forestry.

According to Mutorwa, the proposal would need N$25 million to implement.

Mutorwa on Friday confirmed to The Namibian that the implementation plan has been “fully approved” by Cabinet.

“This does not envisage the use of water committees but water service providers will provide free water and then claim the subsidy from central government.”

According to the memorandum, each “poor” person will receive 15 litres of water per day for basic needs.

“This option is only available for domestic consumption and requires that additional work be done to identify the criteria for selecting who qualifies to be categorised as a poor household,” Mutorwa said.

One of the options discussed was that the subsidy should be accessed by households through a water point committee which would provide free water to the qualifying poor households. The other option was to avoid categorising poor people by allowing every citizen to benefit from the subsidy.

The Under Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Water and Forestry, Abraham Nehemia told The Namibian that next on their timeline of the project is to register beneficiaries. He said this can take up to a year to complete since they have to carry out verifications to establish if applicants are indeed from poor households.

Nehemia said the plan could be operational as early as next year since the process is already half way done.

Although he said the ministry has the data on who should benefit, he said old people’s homes, pensioners and people who use communal water points are likely to be beneficiaries.

“We will go to all these places and verify with the water committees and traditional leaders. There will be a lot of verification in order not to end up giving the subsidised water to the rich while the poor remain unattended,” he said.

Nehemia said that although his ministry had estimated that N$25 million would be needed for the implementation plan, they are yet to calculate the exact amount needed on an annual basis to be able to sustain the plan.

In the memorandum, the ministry admitted that information gathered at this stage is inadequate to implement the project and that there is need to conduct studies to come up with a policy and additional funding.

“This includes funding for the implementation modality studies; the collection and sharing of information; the improvement of the infrastructure of the service providers; as well as the actual application tools and process,” the memorandum explained.

According to the implementation plan, a number of service providers indicated that they are already providing water to poor households but are not able to receive payment from all their customers because some residents cannot afford to pay bills.

The water supply and sanitation policy of 2008 states that there is need to subsidise or introduce a rebate mechanism for communities that are unable to pay for water.

The operational plan shows that the ministry is on track regarding the set deadlines.

According to the plan, the ministry is supposed to develop a research team to define beneficiaries as well as register them from July this year.