HARARE – A Harare resident has filed an urgent High Court application seeking to halt the further installation of prepaid water meters across the city, arguing that the City of Harare and its private partner are operating without legal authority, in breach of the city’s own water by-laws.
She also accuses the city of violating the Administrative Justice Act through its failure to consult residents before imposing a fundamentally new system of water supply.
The case could derail the government’s plans to extend the prepaid metering model to Bulawayo and other cities nationwide.
Bernaddete Makaya, a ratepayer from Mabelreign, is represented by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR). She cited the City of Harare, the minister of local government and public works, and Helcraw Water, a Southerton-based private company, as respondents in her June 3 application.
Helcraw Water has been contracted to implement the prepaid meter project across Harare. The company is owned by Farai Jere, a Zanu PF member of parliament, raising questions about the procurement process through which the company secured its partnership with the City of Harare.
If it succeeds, it would not only suspend the Harare rollout but effectively block the government’s reported plan to impose the same prepaid metering model in Bulawayo, which is understood to be next in line for the programme.
In her founding affidavit, Makaya states that the City of Harare, acting in partnership with Helcraw Water, began installing prepaid water meters across Harare sometime in 2025. The rollout reached the Sunridge area of Mabelreign in 2026, when a meter was installed at her residence.
“Since the installation of the pre-paid water meter, I discovered that if I do not purchase credit for water my taps run dry and the water does stop running at my house,” she deposes.
Makaya further says the meter is enclosed in a locked black box fitted outside the house, making it impossible for residents to verify the accuracy of readings – a problem compounded by frequent water cuts in the area. The system offers only a small in-house monitor that displays the water credit balance when the digits 11 are pressed.
She contends the prepaid system is the “complete opposite” of the post-payment system that previously governed water supply in Harare, under which residents received water first and were billed afterwards, either by estimate or for actual consumption over a given period, usually a month.
The legal challenge rests on three grounds. First, Makaya argues that neither the Urban Councils Act nor the Harare Water By-Laws of 1913 authorise a prepaid water distribution system. Both instruments, she says, provide only for a post-paid system.
The introduction of prepaid meters therefore lacks any legal instrument to support it and is ultra vires the existing regulatory framework.
Second, Makaya argues the prepaid system violates the mandatory 24-hour written disconnection notice requirement enshrined in section 69(2)(e) of the Third Schedule to the Urban Councils Act and Clause 8(a) of the Standard Form Contract for Water Supplies, which forms part of the Harare Water By-Laws. Under the prepaid system, water is cut off automatically the moment a consumer’s credit is exhausted, with no prior written notice delivered physically or by registered post as required under section 61 of the by-laws.
“The water supplies are just disconnected when the water credit is exhausted,” she states, adding that the ability to check a balance on a monitor “does not amount and suffice to the written notice which is required in terms of law.”
Third, Makaya invokes the Administrative Justice Act directly, arguing that the City of Harare and Helcraw Water, as administrative authorities, failed in their duty to act lawfully under section 3 of the Act. This includes the failure to consult affected residents before rolling out a system that fundamentally altered how water is supplied, metered, and disconnected across the city – replacing a post-paid model residents had operated under for decades with a prepaid one, without any public participation process or prior notification.
The system also fails to provide statements of account in relation to water consumption as required under section 49 of the Harare Water By-Laws, a further ground of unlawfulness cited in the affidavit.
The draft order seeks a suspension of all further prepaid meter installations by the City of Harare and Helcraw Water, and an order directing the city and the minister to promulgate by-laws governing a prepaid water metering system within three months. The draft proposes no order as to costs. – ZimLive
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