The systematic water torture

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Feb 22, 2013

It is irresponsible of the Federal Government to use water to hold the people to ransom by manufacturing a water shortage in Selangor.

Stan CH Lee, Free Malaysia Today

Under Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas), Malaysians are paying more and more for water that is not even fit to drink.We have been living with murky, tea coloured water for years, forcing us to spend thousands on home water filters.

Imagine, just to get clean water to drink. This alone is the clearest sign that the water concessionare is not doing its job.

Like all BN privatisation projects, this is a lopsided contract favouring cronies over the people’s welfare.

When the CEO is paid a whopping RM425,000 a month basic pay, in a loss-making concern, you would think he should be more than satisfied with his pay. But no, he still needs to make even more money by buying pipes from his own company in Indonesia – in clear breach of the terms of the privatisation contract.

I for one do not understand why a contract cannot be nullified if terms are breached.

And now there is the ongoing water crisis in Selangor.

Looming large in the background is the BN backed Langat 2 project – ostensibly conceived to alleviate future water shortage by getting water from Pahang.

The catch is, you need to cut through the Main Range to bring the water over, resulting in a mega billion ringgit bill. To be paid by – you guessed it – increasing the water tariff on a monopolised water supply.

This has been in the pipeline for a while now since BN days and waiting to be fast tracked for negotiated tender and award – no doubt to another BN crony with absolutely no track record but plenty of cables.

But there is a stumbling block.Water is under state jurisdiction – and the Selangor state government, now under Pakatan Rakyat, has an alternative source of water from Perak that will cost only a fraction of what Langat 2 is projected to cost.

This will go a long way to help people mitigate the rising costs of living. So there is a stalemate. BN wants to spend billions on Langat 2. Pakatan does not.