DAWASA cut water losses by making frontline staff the reform engine

Dar es Salaam's water utility had a familiar operational problem: water was being produced but not fully billed and collected. The obvious answer would have been more hardware or another consultant diagnosis.

Under Field-Level Leadership, DAWASCO and DAWASA put frontline staff into peer-led change workshops. The World Bank's account says all rank-and-file staff from DAWASA and selected DAWASCO branches joined, along with some senior managers.

The reported result was DAWASA's best-ever non-revenue-water performance in the 12 months after FLL implementation. Monthly NRW fell as low as 30%, mainly through improved metering, billing and collections by staff.

Fix losses through staff behavior first

The reform focused on the people who touched meters, bills and customers every day.

Peer-led workshops created a safe space to surface long-standing problems without waiting for hierarchy.

The gains came from basic commercial discipline, which made the improvement cheap to replicate.

Loss reduction is not only an engineering problem; when meters and bills already exist, staff routines can be the hidden control valve.

The DAWASA experience became one of the World Bank's headline FLL examples. Mara Warwick, then World Bank Country Director for Tanzania, described the roll-out as anchoring change across the organization rather than only in senior managers' heads.