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Cambodia: Water agency's efficiency
lauded
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
PHNOM PENH - Much to the dismay of those
championing the privatization of Asia's water sectors,
the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) appears to
be a winning example of an efficient water-delivery
system run by a public body.
The PPWSA has
succeeded in providing 85,700 homes with water by the
end of 2002, almost 80 percent of the demand in this
city of 981,805 people. In 1993, when Ek Sonn Chan,
general director of PPWSA, began working at the agency,
only 25 percent of the homes had tap water.
Phnom Penh's water agency has also ensured that
the homes connected to its 752-kilometer-long network of
pipes will have flowing water throughout the day. In
1993, by contrast, dry taps were the order of the day,
and people were fortunate to have water flowing from
their faucets for 10 hours each day.
"We are
going to expand the services," said Ek Sonn Chan, who
attributes the transformation of the city's water-supply
services to public officials determined to improve the
city's quality of life and liveability after being
ravaged by two decades of war and unrest.
"The
authority enjoys autonomy; the managers have power to
make decisions," he added. "Our salaries are not very
high but there is a high level of motivation."
Asia's bigger cities, however, are under
pressure from the global trend toward the privatization
of the water services for the sake of "efficiency".
Private water vendors have replaced public bodies in
cities such as Manila and Jakarta. Kathmandu and Colombo
have been mentioned as the next to follow this trend.
"In Phnom Penh, we see a good example of an
autonomous-run public utility," said Wouter Lincklaen
Arriens, a water-resources specialist at the
Manila-based Asian Development Bank. "[But] for
mega-cities, it is hard to see governments doing this.
It makes a case for privatization."
"When
governments need help, they should open up to
private-sector involvement," added Sherisa Nuesa, chief
financial officer of Manila Water, one of two private
companies that are supplying water to the Philippine
capital's 10 million people.
According to Nuesa,
however, privatizing the water supply network does not
mean privatizing the right to water. "Governments must
not give up holding the right to water. We are only
leasing it."
In Manila, though, residents
continue to complain that five years after the
megacity's water supply system was privatized, water
woes remain. Among their chief complaints: the price of
water keeps going up under a supposedly more efficient
system.
In Phnom Penh, running tap water also
comes at a price for the city's poor. They have to pay
nearly 50 US cents per cubic meter of water, as opposed
to the 60 cents they paid when buying water before from
a private vendor.
Yet this has not dampened the
backing that the PPWSA's efforts are receiving, given
the sore lack of access to water and quality water
services that many people are experiencing in many parts
of the world.
Nearly 1.1 billion people
worldwide, including one out of every three people in
Asia, lack access to safe drinking water. Asia's urban
poor are among the worst hit, given that more than 40
percent of its urban poor lack piped water.
Children bear the brunt of the health
consequences of safe water deprivation. Nearly 4 billion
cases annually of diarrhea occur every year, of which
some 2.2 million are fatal, mostly among children under
five years.
"Diarrhea deaths among Cambodia's
urban poor have been very high, often exceeding the
worldwide percentages," said Steven Iddings, an
environmental specialist at the World Health
Organization's Phnom Penh office.
Since taps
were introduced in Phnom Penh two months ago, the lives
of 65-year-old grandmother Huy Savann and her two
grandchildren have drastically changed. The children are
no longer falling ill with diarrhea. "Before, the
children would fall sick often. Sometimes, it was very
serious and they had to be hospitalized," said Huy, who
has been living in the slum under the shadow of a
Buddhist temple for the past three years.
For
Iddings, the PPWSA's work in this city's slum
communities is just what the doctor ordered. "Its
efforts to extend piped water services that are metered
is exactly what is needed for the urban poor. It will
benefit children's health in particular."
This
has not been lost on Phnom Penh's water man, Ek Sonn
Chan. He is also looking ahead to meeting a key United
Nations benchmark - the reduction by 2015 of half the
world's population who have no access to safe drinking
water and sanitation.
"By 2015, we will be
serving 95 percent of the city's people, providing more
poor with water than the UN target," he said.
(Inter Press Service)
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