Kenyans To Pay More For Clean Water As Bills Set To Rise

Kenyans to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for water as water bills are set to increase in the wake of pressure from the World Bank for new conservation levies and increased regulatory charges for water companies.

Kenyan water service providers should cover 70 percent of the Water Resource Authority’s (WRA) budget from the current 30 percent according to the multilateral financier.

The introduction of freshwater conservation levies will see the service providers pass the additional costs to homes and businesses for piped water and sewerage.

“To enhance access to water and sanitation services and improve the management and conservation of water resources… implements new water abstraction charges and water conservation levies,” the World Bank said.

Abstraction charges are what the licensed water providers pay the WRA for accessing the commodity from natural sources like rivers.

The World Bank said that the current water abstraction charges do not provide adequate economic incentives for water conservation, nor generate enough financial resources to enable WRA to perform its regulatory functions.

According to the top executive at the Water Services Regulatory Board (WSRB), which approves new tariffs, the proposed changes affect companies that harvest raw water from rivers. The water companies will call for an increase from the regulator to reflect the higher cost of obtaining the water.

The World Bank’s push for higher water levies was revealed in an advisory to the government after it approved a new loan for Kenya valued at Sh80 billion to help the country continue responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and address its debt vulnerabilities.

Each service provider is expected to recover its full cost of providing services in the medium- to long-term and leave a surplus to allow them to improve infrastructure under the new tariff guidelines. Currently, Kenyans pay an average of Sh93 per cubic meter or 1,000 liters for water piped to homes.