Non-revenue water reduction in Malaysia

The price of water in Malaysia is very low and does not cover the actual costs. Huge amounts of unidentified water losses call for the government to support the water board companies with major funding each year.

A lot of factors needs to be considered when trying to identify water losses: leaking pipes, valves or tapping saddles as well as more difficult factors to identify such as malfunctioning domestic household meters, theft of water and lacking management skills of the water company.

Non-revenue water within a utility’s network is a huge source of wastage. It adds greatly to operating costs, and leaks can add big complication and expenses to the sustainable management of water services. Hence, the Malaysian government and the Kelantan State decided to initiate the reduction of non-revenue water by focusing on repairing pipelines.

In 2008, AVK secured the contract of supplying tapping saddles, repair clamps and valves to improve the pipelines of Kelantan State in Malaysia. Kelantan has approximately 1.5 million inhabitants and is an agrarian state with lush paddy fields and rustic fishing villages meaning quite a huge amount of water consumption.

The project was for 60,000 tapping saddles, 60,000 repair clamps, 5,600 gate valves and 600 air valves. Quality was a very important issue. Another important issue was AVK’s 10-year product warranty and our halal certificates for the grease used to assemble our valves. Also, AVK has been working closely with the contractor, who has had no claims regarding AVK products since the beginning of our cooperation almost 10 years ago.

Before the launch of the project, water losses in the state of Kelantan was measured to 45 %. A year after our project ended, the non-revenue water is measured to 30 %. The pipelines have been repaired and are working well. Some of the issues now to be addressed are the more difficult ones to identify. In Malaysia there is a huge problem with people tapping water directly from the pipelines trying to get around the household meters and with household meters that are malfunctioning or tampered with and therefore not measuring correctly. This causes a continuous huge amount of water loss.

First step has been taken to reduce the non-revenue water in Kelantan. At AVK we are proud to have been part of a cut-down of approx. a third of the previous water loss, considering all the factors to be aware of when talking non-revenue water. Hopefully the state of Kelantan will succeed in reducing the non-revenue water in the years to come.