Insights and challenges of efficient water service provision and management

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There is a growing need to understand how the scarce water resources could be conserved and efficiently provided to the local societies. This paper examines the non-revenue water management practices in the local municipality and its impact on water service provision. The results of the study indicated that the municipality does not have sufficient capability to monitor and manage water provision and usage. Almost half of the respondents thought that the municipality does not take non-revenue water management seriously. The results suggest that the local water service provider operations and approaches to non-revenue water management is a real threat to the local government and society. The municipality needs to be proactively involved in the efforts to adapt to practices and mitigation strategies to reduce non-revenue water.

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    • Fig. 1. NRW circle
    • Fig. 2. The IWA best practice standard water balance
    • Fig. 3. KwaZulu-Natal map
    • Fig. 4. Respondents views on NRW assessment methods and management policies
    • Fig. 5. Respondents’ views on the effectiveness of the NRW municipal policies
    • Fig. 6. Cause of illegal connections
    • Fig. 7. Perception towards water usage
    • Table 1. Gender distribution by age
    • Table 2. Water conservation
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Environmental Economics
Environmental Economics