| Change Meter Program Bounces Back |
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“As brand new meters became available a few months ago, the Change Meter Program slowly picked up in December with 2,190 meter replacements carried out.”
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“Collection efficiency, on-time payment and water collection suffered slow turn-outs in December due to the long holiday season when collection centers were closed.”
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The Change Meter Program slightly picked up in December after a slump in November. With 2,190 old meters replaced this month, the number of replacements for the year has reached 27,376 meters, about 24 percent short of the year’s target of 36,000 meter replacements. The failure to meet the target was largely attributed to the unavailability of the required number of brand new meters, particularly during the months of June, July and August when the program’s implementation slowed down.
Aside from old meters, 1,570 defective meters in the field were also replaced. Replacement was based on the report generated by the Electronic and Data
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Processing Department on connections with extremely low consumption due to stuck or defective meters.
The Change Meter Program is one of the major strategies employed by the district to combat non-revenue water. Defective meters cause gross understatements of customers’ water consumption by approximately 4.55 cubic meters per connection per month. When aggregated, these losses will translate to several millions of revenues lost to the district. The goal of the program, therefore, is to keep the age of water meters in the field to within 5 years in order to maintain their accuracy and efficiency.
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| Leak Response Time Up 23.87% |
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The amount of time it took to respond to leaks reported and detected was 23.87 percent longer in December at 6.85 hours compared to November’s 5.53 hours. Repair time, however, improved to 2.57 hours from last month’s 2.91.
The increase in response time may be attributed to the higher number of leaks that occurred in December than in November, although the volume of water lost resulting from the leaks decreased. Apparently, bursts or mainline leaks were not as severe this month.
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Leak response time during the past few months showed a decreasing trend starting in August when it fell to 7.87 hours from 8.35 in July. The succeeding months sustained the declining pattern—6.56 hours in September, 6.28 hours in October, and 5.53 hours in November. The pattern, however, broke off with the increase in response time to 6.85 hours in December.
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| Collection Efficiency Down 9.48% |
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Collection efficiency, or the percentage of collection to billing, experienced a huge decline this month compared to the previous month. The 85.07 percent collection efficiency registered in December was 9.46 percent less than the 93.98 percent recorded in November. This was most probably due to the long holiday season wherein collection centers were closed.
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Water collection and on-time payment for the month similarly fell 16.39 and 10.02 percent, respectively. Water collection in December totaled to only PhP63.4 million while on-time payment was pegged at 66.7 percent.
These declines, however, are expected to pick up in January as customers usually flock to the collection centers to pay their unsettled obligations for the previous year.
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