THE City of Harare shocked residents this week by effectively admitting that its prepaid water meters can bill households for thin air.
The admission followed complaints that meters were deducting credit even when no water flowed through taps. Rather than deny the allegations, the city and its private partner, Helcraw Water, acknowledged that under certain hydraulic conditions, compressed air travelling through water pipes can spin a meter's impeller and register as consumption.
Engineers may regard this as a technical explanation. Ratepayers see it differently. They are paying for water, not air.
The city blames pipe bursts, emergency repairs, intermittent supplies and ageing infrastructure for trapping pressurised air in water mains. It insists the meters are not defective because they measure flow rather than distinguish between water and air.
That is precisely the problem. A metering system that cannot distinguish the product being sold from empty air is not fit for purpose. Consumers buy water, not engineering explanations.
More astonishing still is the city's advice that residents should shut off their taps when air starts flowing and report the incident. That shifts responsibility from the service provider to the customer. It is akin to asking motorists to pay for fuel that never entered their tanks and then blaming them for failing to watch the pump closely enough.
No private business could survive charging customers for goods it never delivered. A local authority entrusted with providing an essential public service should be held to an even higher standard.
The timing makes the controversy even more offensive. Harare already produces only a fraction of the water its residents require. Many suburbs go for days, sometimes weeks, without running water, forcing families to drill boreholes, buy water from private suppliers and invest in storage tanks. Now residents are discovering that even the limited prepaid credit they can afford may disappear into pockets of compressed air trapped in a decaying distribution network.
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That is unacceptable.
Prepaid metering was sold as a modern solution that would improve efficiency, reduce losses and strengthen revenue collection. Instead, it risks becoming a symbol of misplaced priorities. There is little value in modernising billing systems while the infrastructure delivering the service continues to crumble. Service delivery must come before revenue collection.
The City of Harare must now move beyond technical explanations and take responsibility. It should immediately suspend all disputed charges linked to air passing through prepaid meters, commission an independent technical audit and publish its findings, and refund or credit every household that lost prepaid water units without receiving water. At the same time, it must address the underlying causes by investing in water production, replacing ageing pipelines, repairing leaks and ending the intermittent supply that allows air to accumulate in the network.
Public confidence will not be restored through carefully worded statements. It will return only when residents receive the service they are paying for.
Charging people for water they never received is indefensible.
Charging them for air is beyond absurd.
