Affordability Of Household Water And
Wastewater Charges In Manukau City:
A Case Study
Author(s)
B. Mahmood & S. Sharma
Abstract
Low-income households spend a substantial share of their income on utility
services such as electricity, heating and water. The difficulty of these socially
vulnerable consumers to absorb further price increases is often used as an
argument against increasing rates. However, detailed quantitative information on
the affordability of rate adjustments for low-income consumers is actually quite
scarce. Much of the available information is based on total household’s
expenses. This study takes a more detailed look at the affordability of water and
wastewater service’s charges for low-income consumers in Manukau City. While
there was no sufficient available data, the project finds that affordability is a
problem for low-income consumers in Manukau. Given all household groups of
income categories the percentage income spent on water and wastewater was
determined and compared with an acceptable benchmark. It was found that the
average amount spent on water and wastewater has increased at a higher rate (i.e.
26.84%) than the average income (i.e. 3.15%) in all income groups, and the
burden of water and wastewater rates is increasing in terms of percentage of
weekly income spent on it, especially, in the lower income earners category. The
low-income earners spent 3.24% of their weekly income on water and
wastewater service charges in 2001 and were spending 4.11% in 2006. The
sewerage charge was 14.6% in 2001 and 13.3% in 2007, and proportion of
household falling into this category has declined by 1.3% since 2001. The results
showed that a higher number of households may have faced a financial hardship,
since 2001. In order to make the government and water industries aware of this
problem, the term \“affordability” needs to be taken into account as an assistant
of the assessment of household water and sewerage services in Manukau City or
wider over New Zealand.
Keywords: affordability, water and wastewater services charges.
Keywords
affordability, water and wastewater services charges
Related Book
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