LWB takes over sewerage system

Lilongwe Water Board (LWB) will from April 1 this year take over the management of the city’s sewerage system from Lilongwe City Council.

Speaking during the handover on Friday, LWB director of production and distribution Engineer Gustaff Chikasema said the board will have two separate departments handling water provision and sewerage services.

He added that immediately after adopting the system, the board will start working on improving service delivery in the sewerage system.

“We will start with the treatment plant itself. We will upgrade to treat more waste water. We will also rehabilitate and expand the network to a number of areas so that it can accommodate a lot more people,” said Chikasema.

He said the board has also organised capacity building training for personnel to ensure they manage the system well.

On his part, Lilongwe City Council’s Engineer Cleaverson Nyando said the council has addressed most of the challenges facing the sewerage system, including response time when a burst pipe has been reported.

The council has been managing the system from the 1980s.

“We are handing over a system that is perfect. Though there may be some areas that may require working on, it is still a functional system,” said Nyando.

He said the council stopped collecting payments for the sewerage services a long time ago because the payment system was cumbersome.

The council officials will physically visit residents using the service to collect fees, but they stopped doing that around 1996.