SARPA ASSISTS PIESA WITH TRAINING
Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 02:01AM It is with great joy in my heart that I can report that after two long years of organising the PIESA Revenue Protection Course, we have at last managed to present it and in the end the wait was worth the effort as it turned out to be a huge success.
The first initial proposed venue was the Kafue Gorge Training centre in Zambia, but after two unsuccessful tries to set up the training there, the venue was moved to the Ekurhuleni area, where it also took two tries to get it right.
The event took place in the first week of November and was very well attended by representatives from Utilities as far north in Africa as Kenya. This high attendance rate caused me some real sleepless nights, as we had to make some drastic changes to the course material and produce more than four times the amount of manuals, due to the fact that the numbers changed from the expected 11 to 44 overnight.
With most of the members attending both courses (Sensitising and Advance Management) a much more comprehensive manual was developed in a ''Modular format'', so that it could be utilized for both the courses. Soft copies of presentations and documents were also made available to participants via their memory sticks, in order for them to be able to give comprehensive feedback to their superiors on their return home.
A very big contingent from Ekurhuleni attended the course and we would, hereby, like to thank Mr Fred Fryer from Ekurhuleni for that effort. We would also like to thank Mr Joshua Mutoa from KPLC for his support to the training effort.
The training turned out to be very interesting due to the high volume of attendees, as diverse viewpoints regarding matters were received from the different Utilities perspective. The diversity of the group was also a challenge in itself, as we had some members who have had no training or exposure to revenue protection at all, while others had been doing the job for years as a smaller part of their job description (without any training) and others who have received on-the-job training and who are dealing with revenue protection matters on a daily basis.
The main topics that received a lot of attention during discussion times were; the expected impact of smart metering on revenue protection operators and processes, the different tamper methods, split metering, sealing procedures, community awareness programmes, methods to motivate field operators and the best methods to perform meter audits.
The input from the Ekurhuleni members regarding the "Tembisa AMR project" and the "protected enclosures" were very interesting in itself and the group came to the conclusion that you cannot prevent tampering by implementing all these drastic measures and technological metering devices, but you will manage it better. It was also noted that in the "AMR project", it took the Technical staff members, in the end, to redesign the processes and work methods, in order to make the project the success it is today.
We also did a "Myth Buster exercise" by trying to open a lead seal with a pin. Apart from the KPLC guys ruining the table cloth by melting the seal together and another running a flame as big as a refineries torch (in order to get the pin really hot) no seal was successfully opened. We, therefore, decided the " Myth is Busted" but those seals did not work for us due to the pliers involved in the sealing process and should, therefore, be replaced as soon as possible with plastic or paper uniquely numbered seals.
We would also like to thank Naas from Ekurhuleni for supplying some demonstration meters, organising of the field trip and his wonderful and entertaining feedback regarding certain issues. When he took us to one of their very nice protective structures in the field, he never expected to receive so many questions regarding that one box. Also thanks to Naas for keeping my personal record intact, by allowing us to discover a tampered meter during a training course field trip. The participants also really enjoyed the fact that we actually found a tamper and we all posed for a team photograph next to the tampered box.
When the time came to say goodbye it was a very sad moment, as the participants had formed a strong bond and team spirit during the few days that the training took place. A member from Namibia summed up everyone's feelings by saying that it was the first course that he attended where everyone had the same problem and where he could share his ideas with everyone and they did the same.
I would like use this opportunity to thank PIESA for giving us in SARPA the chance to present these courses and we look forward to next year's courses which will definitely be held in Kafue Gorge. For those who missed out on this wonderful experience this time, see you next year in Zambia!
Rens Bindeman
SARPA Technical Advisor