Manipulation of meters and meter readings

Customers and meter readers might collude to reduce water bills.

Risk type: Practice

Risk driver: Internal; External

DESCRIPTION

Customers who are unwilling to pay for the water they consumed may collude with meter readers to reduce the volume of water recorded, thereby lowering their bill. This may also cover up high consumption resulting from the illegal reselling of water. Falsified meter readings are difficult to detect in many utilities because of both chronic technical problems with meters and lax oversight of field staff.

RED FLAGS

• High levels of non-revenue water
• Large number of customers with surprisingly low consumption in certain areas

KEY GUIDING DOCUMENTS

STRATEGIC, 2009, Corruption Practices and the Available Complaint, Feedback and Redress Tool(s) and Anti-corruption Tool(s) in Water and Sanitation Sector – Bondo District, Strategic Public Relations and Research Limited, Draft prepared for Kenya Water for Health Organisation (KWAHO) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Davis, J., 2004, Corruption in Public Service Delivery: Experience from South Asia’s Water and Sanitation Sector. World Dev. 32, 53–71

TARGETED EXAMPLES

Shortage of staff and meters gives room to manipulation¹

Target group: Utilities

Location: Kenya

Constraints such as shortage of staff and inadequate transport sometimes lead to incorrect billing or even delays in delivery of bills to consumers. Because there are cases where there is a shortage of meters, estimates of consumption are used and this purely relies on the goodwill of the water official. This is an obvious loophole that leads to corruption as the consumers want to pay less and the official is not sufficiently remunerated to refuse bribes to charge them less. […] This obviously affects many other aspects of the development of the water supply system including the improvement of the infrastructure and staff development.

Estimated meter readings²

Target group: Utilities

Location: South Asia

As one supervisor noted: ‘With the meter reading, the men are in the field and we have no control over them. Most of our meters do not work properly. It is accepted for the meter reader to give an estimate when there is no proper meter reading. We cannot go and check all the meters ourselves… [W]e must accept what they tell us… We cannot punish the worker but we can tell him to go and do the job without a payment of any bribes.’

FULL REFERENCES

1. STRATEGIC, 2009, Corruption Practices and the Available Complaint, Feedback and Redress Tool(s) and Anti-corruption Tool(s) in Water and Sanitation Sector – Bondo District, Strategic Public Relations and Research Limited, Draft prepared for Kenya Water for Health Organisation (KWAHO) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
2. Davis, J., 2004, Corruption in Public Service Delivery: Experience from South Asia’s Water and Sanitation Sector. World Dev. 32, 53–71