AYV News, December 20, 2023
In a strategic move to enhance institutional transformation and productivity, the Managing Director of the Sierra Leone Water Company (SALWACO), Ing. George Lamin Vandi and the Director of Project Management, Ing. Yankuba Tarawally have engaged the leadership of the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Corporation to better understand operational merits and to enhance institutional collaboration for quality service delivery.
Benchmarking as the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies is a move adopted by the SALWACO leadership to better and standardize procedures and operations.
Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. SALWACO as a utility has a vision to be the leading water utility in Africa and meeting that vision requires actions that will allow efficiency and effective service delivery.
MD Vandi and Director Yankuba travelled to Kenya after the COP-28 to benchmark Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Corporation (NCWSC) on the use of smart metering for sustainable service delivery.
The Managing Director and his team engaged his counterpart in Nairobi and presentations were made by both agencies highlighting the successes and challenges faced by the utilities.
Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Corporation is the leading water utility in East Africa and benchmarking their activities will help SALWACO deliver on their mission and achieve the company’s vision.
The SALWACO team also visited the areas of water kiosks in Nairobi for pro-poor areas and the use of solar water dispensers for public stand posts.
The team shared experiences on the current production, supply and demand patterns for the utilities. SALWCO further seeks to meet the current demand of its customers and by extension the SDG6 which was recognized by NCWSC.
The management was also trained on effective billing systems as NCWSC is using a simplified software called BASIS II which was developed locally and used for revenue generation.
The benchmarking exercise ended with an agreement to have an MOU between SALWACO and NCWSC which will include personnel exchanges and training programs between the two utilities.
