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Athi Water Services Board is looking for consultants to help improve Nairobi water supply network in a bid to cut water leakages and remove illegal connections.
The World Bank has given money to the government for water and sanitation service improvement, which Athi says part of it will be used for the consultation services.
The consulting services involve carrying out a feasibility study, detailed design and bidding documents for Nairobi CBD water supply network. It will involve redoing the network afresh using appropriate pipe material to reduce non-revenue water. The objective is to eliminate illegal connections and reduce leakages and also improve water pressures and reliability of the water distribution network through restoration of the pipe network hydraulics. The consultant is expected to carry out detailed assessment and recommend viable solutions.
In 2015, a report by UN’s Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, noted that high levels of non-revenue water are another concern for water availability and sustainability in a water-scarce country like Kenya. In most of the country, 50 per cent of the water is lost owing to “illegal” connections, leakage and other technical problems, according to the report. “Water losses obviously threaten sustainability — both economic and environmental,” it said. “More efforts have to be deployed in order to further decrease these losses, including through targeted investments for operation and maintenance.”
Athi Water is one of the eight water services boards under the Ministry of Water and Irrigation created to bring about efficiency, economy and sustainability in the provision of water and sewerage services in Kenya.
