The future drought

JAN 22 — There is a need to first point out some facts when talking about droughts. First and foremost, thanks to Berita Harian for pointing out that the students of UKM were and still are apparently doing their exams without water. The crazy thing about this is that it has been going on for the past two weeks, with the apparent excuse given to the students, one of whom is my younger brother, that the Semenyih Dam was dry.

A fact that was not posted anywhere online or via circular by UKM, SYABAS or even the state government. In fact, SYABAS would rather release a statement now, on the eve of the Chinese New Year celebration, instead of even mentioning the lack of water during UKM’s exam week.

We are currently reading reports in the papers that the Association of Water and Energy Research (AWER) is stating that the RM11.40 free water per house programme in Selangor was not researched properly. Furthermore, there is apparently a Federal guideline which states houses built with a certain size of roof area would have some form of rainwater harvesting mechanism.

One can only wonder if the Selangor state government would now look at those large houses coming up in Shah Alam’s Section 7 to make sure the guideline is being enforced.

Now this brings me to a few questions:

Firstly, the timing is suspect for AWER to come out with such a statement now. Why now?

There is no denying that water is a sensitive issue, especially in Selangor. Not that I’m complaining, this gave me something to write about.

Secondly, again, the timing is suspect. It is the dry season! To talk about water harvesting now is like walking around Africa telling them they need to eat more fresh highland vegetables.

But let us also look at some statistics highlighted in the report by the Malaysian Water Association (MWA) whose website is God-awful out-dated and yet, just updated to announce the Malaysian Water Industry Guide for 2011. No news, no announcements, no reports since 2007, but there it is, lo and behold, an announcement that the 2011 report is now on sale.

Again, I suspect their timing and initiative, particularly since it is now coming to the end of January 2012.

According to their 2011 report, Malaysia lost RM1.74 billion worth of non-revenue water in 2010.

Now, let’s also take a look at SYABAS’s recent mention in the news that Selangor will be looking at unscheduled water cuts and low pressure in the districts of Hulu Langat, Sepang, Kuala Langat and Petaling. I found it hilarious that with the mention of the report stating that Selangor had the highest NRW, basically water leaking during transmission, SYABAS’s corporate affairs executive director Abdul Halem Mat Som had the nerve to state to The Star that it was not a matter of less supply but higher demand.

Now, let’s look at some facts highlighted by other parties about water in Selangor.

AWER’s president, S. Piarapakaran, stated that the state of Selangor’s demand for water will increase 2 to 2.5 per cent up till 2014. The average annual increase from 2007 to 2010 is 2.14 per cent.

Meanwhile Selangor’s non-revenue water (NRW) is still above 30 per cent per year, as mentioned by the Selangor Times in October 2011.

Selangor produced 4.063 million litres of water a day in 2010. If we take NRW to be 30 per cent, this means that 1.2189 million litres is lost daily.

According to a survey done in 2008 by the Water and Energy Consumers Association of Malaysia, an average Malaysian uses 200 litres of water a day.

As of December 2011, Selangor is home to 5,607,060 people. That basically means that Selangor needs 1121.412 million litres daily!

So now I personally have come to a few startling conclusions.

Firstly since 2008 people in Selangor have definitely lowered their average consumption of water from 200 litres daily since we are all still using water in abundance.

Secondly, SYABAS would rather blame higher demand instead of stating the fact that they lose so much water due to their inability to replace old pipes in the Selangor water grid to stop the loss of water in transmission.

And thirdly, putting politics aside, we have to face facts that Selangor will be facing a drought should the status quo remain, even if I find certain statements in bad timing and thoroughly alarmist in nature.

The truth remains that the state government needs to take the lead, not so much because the Federal government is lagging in an objective that was supposed to have been completed by 2009, but because Pakatan Rakyat has a better track record at tackling waste than Barisan Nasional.

So one final question for Pakatan Rakyat in Selangor; can you please just pay the billions and take over SYABAS already?

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.