Engagés pour l'eau et l'assainissement urbains

At the beginning of the project and after several years of war, the situation was very poor; the water distribution was not continuous, the treatment plants did not meet their design capacity, the pressure in the network was very low and there was a lot of illegal connections. Less than 30% of the water produced was billed to the consumers.

The rehabilitation program covered various fields: rehabilitation of the production facilities, rehabilitation of the distribution facilities and overall improvement in management. LYSA was in charge of the last item and more particularly to set up a proper customer management.

First phase -under the 1991 French grant- implemented over years 1992-93:

• review and assessment of the overall situation; operation of the various departments of the Water Board.
• implementation of a field customer census in pilot areas in order to identify rehabilitation needs and to increase revenue collection.
• designing a computerized billing system.
• starting the relevant training programs.

Second phase -under the 1992 French grant- implemented over years 1993-94:

• continuation of the field customer survey and continuation of the rehabilitation works.
• modelling the network in order to prepare the water supply master plan.
• installing a billing computer center.
• procurement of a billing software tailored to the needs.
• coding the customers files.
• definition of an appropriate commercial and tariff policy.
• relevant training

Third phase -under the 1994 French grant- implemented over year 1995:

• issuing computerized bills to the whole metropolitan area.
• improving the various procedures.
• staff training.
• definition of an action plan to reduce unaccounted-for water and to improve the collection ratio.
• strengthening of field control to identify illegal connection.
• standardizing of the squatted areas.
• management of the so called public wells, supplied by the public network.
• training and motivation of the revenue collectors.
• tariff policy.

Fourth phase -under the 1995 French grant- implemented over year 1996 (on-going):

• continuation of the efficiency improvement policy in the commercial field.
• procurement of additional computer equipment.
• development of additional sub-programs to improve the software.
• leak detection programs.

Performance indicators of the company are improving gradually: