Africa-Press – Rwanda. Bringing with him nearly two decades of experience in water engineering, project management, and policy development, Asaph Kabaasha is set to head Water and Sanitation Corporation Group (WASAC Group) as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), following his appointment by the Cabinet, on July 16. He replaces Omar Munyaneza, who was at the helm of WASAC Group since September 2023.
In a phone interview, Kabaasha, a skilled water engineer with more than 10 years of experience in the management of water supply projects, told The New Times that he sees his new position not just as an honour, but a mission to fix persistent water shortages, eliminate inefficiencies in the system, and scale up sanitation services nationwide.
With pressing issues such as water rationing, supply gaps, and infrastructure leakages plaguing communities, the new CEO is setting his sights on three critical areas – network efficiency, water supply expansion, and consumer behaviour change – to ensure that no Rwandan goes without clean, reliable water.
According to the Auditor General’s report for the 2023/24 financial year, WASAC continued to incur losses due to high non-revenue water—water produced but not billed because of leakages, theft, and inaccurate metering, among other factors. Although non-revenue water dropped from 42.4 per cent in 2023, to 39.5 per cent in 2024, it remained high. Of the 76.6 million cubic meters produced, only 30.2 million (60.5 per cent) was billed, leaving unbilled water valued at Rwf9.77 billion, based on a minimum tariff of Rwf323 per cubic meter.
In the interview, Kabaasha laid out his vision, the road ahead, and how his deep sectoral roots have prepared him to guide WASAC into a more sustainable and equitable future.
The excerpts:
First of all, how did you receive the news about your appointment? What does it mean to you to be appointed the CEO of WASAC group?
It’s an honour for me to be trusted by the President of the Republic to serve the country through WASAC Group as the CEO. So, I’m honoured. I’m humbled. And I feel I understand there are challenges ahead to serve the people of Rwanda but I’m considering that I’ve been bestowed this trust and I will give it my best.
So, I’m excited about it and I really look forward to contributing to the development or the growth of water and sanitation sectors through WASAC.
How does your previous work or experience relate to your new responsibilities as WASAC CEO?
It very much aligns with the appointment. I’ve been in the water sector for more than 15 years, since 2007. I joined Electrogaz [a state-owned enterprise that was in charge of water and electricity production and distribution at the time] in 2007 as a water engineer and that was until 2014. So, I was in Electrogaz, [then] EWSA, as it kept on changing names, in different positions like a water engineer, head of planning unit.
From 2014 to 2018, I was doing a PhD in hydraulics modelling; it’s also in the water sector. From 2019 when I came back to Rwanda from South Africa where I did the PhD, I joined the water sector and this time as a project manager [of] one of the water operators’ partnership projects with WASAC and a Dutch organisation called VEI [Vitens Evides International is a Dutch organization focused on improving water and sanitation services in developing countries].
So, you can imagine; from 2007 to now, I have been in the water sector. That really gives me confidence that I pretty much understand the challenges in the water sector. And I think, as I have been given this opportunity to serve, I really feel that I will be able to contribute to the development of the sector.
What are those water challenges that are pressing and you are going to focus on?
The objective of WASAC, the vision of WASAC, is to provide safe and reliable water and sanitation services. There are challenges in aiming to achieve this vision. I cannot really say that everyone in Rwanda at the moment is getting water the way they want it and, in the quantities, or whenever they want it. That’s why we have these programmes of rationing because water is not available 24/7.
So, as the new CEO there are like three areas that I really want to focus on to be able to achieve WASAC’s vision. The first area is focusing on improving the efficiency in our systems; that’s pipe network systems. We have got losses in our systems and I feel that we need to put effort in reducing these losses by improving the efficiency of the systems.
Another thing is that because of different factors like urbanisation, industrial growth, there is a widening gap between demand and supply. And so, as the demand is increasing, there is also a need to invest in supply, identify new sources of water supply. So, that would be the second area of focus.
The third area of focus is on demand management, so much as behaviour change in how consumers use water. Water is a scarce resource; much as people pay for it, it’s also a scarce resource. And we should use it efficiently. So, demand management is one of the things that I think we should focus on.
How is that [demand management] so? Please elaborate.
I can just give one example. When you wake up in the morning and you open a tap and then you start brushing. For five or six minutes you are brushing, your tap water is flowing through it. For five or six minutes, depending on the pressure in the system, it’s like 20 or 10 litres going through the tap. So, you have basically used like 10 litres or 15 litres to brush in the morning.
But you can get a glass of water, which is even a quarter of a litre and still brush. So, those kinds of behaviour changes are needed in water users so that they can use water efficiently. That’s a kind of demand management that I think we will focus on.
That is on the water sector, but as you know, WASAC is also concerned with sanitation. It’s also a mandate of WASAC to provide sanitation services. I think sanitation, as much as it is our mandate, has not really taken strong roots in the company. So, my priority here would be to see how we can build capacity in terms of sanitation, human capacity, but also building infrastructure for sanitation.
There are some projects already ongoing, we will build on those and improve on the sanitation services.
You talked about water rationing, and there are areas where residents complain about lack of water access. There is scarcity. Some even can go like one week without water supply. What do you plan to do to address such issues?
I think those three points I highlighted above are actually to address those issues. Because if you improve efficiency in the system, if you increase water supply, if you manage demand, you are making sure that the water that you put in the system goes to the people, so that no one goes for a week without water.
So, if you reduce the losses, the water that would be lost goes to a certain customer, then you are addressing the problem that you just explained to me, of people spending a couple of months or weeks without water. And I think this is very crucial. I really understand the problem, and I think the people who are faced with this problem, shouldn’t be…
With the improving efficiency in our systems and increasing supply, I think we’ll be able to address the lack of water, people going weeks without water.
What are you envisaging to do to tackle the issue of non-revenue water, which includes of course water leakage?
There is a couple of reasons for leakages in the system, but some of them are like high-pressure zones, and maybe road rehabilitation works, where they damage the pipes and you have leakages there, the infrastructure being exposed to traffic damaging the pipes.
The approach to addressing this, first of all, for those road rehabilitation works, we have to work closely with the people doing rehabilitation, so that we minimise the losses.
For the pressures in the system, we have to put in place measures to manage the pressure so that it doesn’t go beyond what is required in the pipes. And also, some of the pipes which are exposed to the ground, we have to make sure that we bury them underground so that we protect them.
But one of the things that we also have to put effort in is that we have to ensure that wherever a leak appears, it is repaired immediately. There are cases where leaks spend a couple of days without our teams responding. And we have to address that issue so that the response is so quick.
In terms of billing for people who use water and then they have to pay for it, do you see some issues regarding that aspect and how that can be addressed?
For now, I think there have been issues raised by people that they don’t agree with the bills that we give them. Those issues are normally addressed at the branch. So, if a customer comes to the branch, they go into the system and then they address these issues. Most of them, I think, have been addressed.
But still, this is an innovation era that we are in. And we are thinking of innovative measures to use in the billing processing. One of that is using smart meters. We are going to focus on piloting some of these and we see how they perform and we hope that they can address some of those issues that have been raised by our customers.
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