The Selangor Water Crisis- the weapon of the Oppresor.( Part 1/2)

I am not going to underestimate the intelligence of Selangor people. They know the hidden political agenda in the ongoing water crisis. The DPM has said that water rationing is not necessary yet. It was and is never necessary; the dams are filled with water. Rainfall is plenty.

The water shortage issue is a fabricated one. The people know it’s a political ploy to justify what’s next? The what's next will be the continuous barrage against the state government for ignoring the welfare of the people. What’s next will be the justification to build another multibillion Ringgit water treatment plant perhaps already booked for by Syabas Satellite Company.

You are asking people to rise up against a government with a much better track record than all the states run by UMNO/BN leaders. This is the government that gives free water to a certain level. This is also a government that wants to stop the increase in water tariffs on an essential product. Water should have been a natural monopoly not some business allocated to a political crony. This is also the government that wants to reduce the astronomical salary of the person who heads Syabas but who hasn’t shown competence in managing a water supply and treatment company.

Why should Selangor people support UMNO/BN for the manner they proposed to solve the problem? Why should Selangor people elect a government that wants to increase water tariffs by up to 75% so that the selected few Malays will get richer?

Syabas is 70% owned by Puncak Niaga. The other two components in Syabas were given rights to share in fleecing people over the supply of water. The chairman of Syabas pays himself RM 400k/month and he was the person who buys pipes for Syabas from his own company.

Yes, why should we support a government that wants to increase water tariffs? Why should we want to support a government that seems to waste no time in justifying the construction of the Langat 2 dam which will costs RM 8 over billion?

This Langat 2 project- what is it? Is it a logrolling project where the main proponent behind the project wants to secure political allegiance in Selangor? Let’s say it’s the DPM who is the main proponent to have the Langat 2 Dam up and about. If he does that, then he is likely to secure the allegiance of UMNO warlords in Selangor, with whose support he can mount a challenge to kick out wimpy Najib.

Why should Selangor people rally behind Syabas which hasn’t done anything to correct its 32% non-water revenue losses?  

The syabas chairman pays himself over RM 400k a month, yet he couldn’t rectify the NRW losses. If Langat 2 comes about, will his pay gets doubled?

But why are you envious that a Malay gets that big salary? Chinese and others get that salary, you keep quite. That would be the typical knee-jerk response from UMNO supporters who see this issue from the perspectives of race–balancing wealth game. This is not a racial issue. The issue here is UMNO supports the inefficient, the incompetent and the corrupt and its cronies. We just don’t want such a government bossing us anymore.

The people complaining about this are probably Malays themselves. Why is it difficult for UMNO to accept that what it does, how it manages the country is objected to by Malays? If the entire population of Malaysia were Malay, then this would be a case of the oppressed rising in revolt against the oppressor. The downtrodden proletariat versus the bourgeois capitalists. So, imagine this to be issue confronting one people-Malaysians. Malaysians find the water issue objectionable and unconscionable. Only a lunatic will use water as a political weapon on its own people.

What has Syabas not tell the people of Malaysia? It hasn’t told the people that it hasn’t done anything to rectify the 32% non-revenue water losses. Over the years, it has managed to only treat 70% of the water that goes into the water treatment plant. It is clealy incompetent yet it wants more money from the government of the state.

The other part of NRW is the amount of water losses that are incurred in leaky pipes, and other infrastructure support that would ensure efficient water supply to consumers. Has Syabas done enough to replace pipes and prevent distributive losses?

We have not been told that Syabas has failed miserably to efficiently convert enough of that raw water into potable water. Potable water is water fit to run in our taps at home. The technical term for the amount of raw water that is wasted due to inefficiencies in the water treatment plant is called “non-revenue water” or NRW. 32% of water produced by Syabas is wasted. A staggering one-third of the raw water that enters a Syabas water treatment plant goes entirely to waste.

How does this wonderful record compare with what goes on in other countries? In Bangladesh, the NRW is 29 percent. NRW in one of the poorest country in the world is 29% and in Malaysia which is richer and wants to be 1^st world country by 2020, the NRW is 32%. In the Philippines, Eastern Manila managed to bring down its NRW from 63 percent in 1997 to 11 percent in 2010.

Developed nations have even lower levels of NRW – Germany’s NRW is only 7%, while the Netherlands and Denmark have achieved NRW levels of 6%. But then, our leaders have a penchant of comparing our country to nations like Zimbabwe, Kampuchea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Burma etc. we are much better than these countries say our leaders. SPM holders compare themselves to SRP holders but not STP holders. MCE against LCE but never HSC holders. Singapore, the much maligned little red dot down south has an NRW level of 5%.

Under Syabas’ stellar management whose chairman gets paid over RM 400k a month, it manages to waste six times more water than Singapore. How much does Singapore pay its water supply company CEO? Syabas, Syabas, well done!