YESTERDAY, I asked my former colleague who keeps a house in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore on how much his average monthly water bill is. He says he pays about RM10 for water for his superlink terrace house in KL and S$15 (RM38) for his small Housing and Development Board apartment in Singapore. His neighbour in KL, meanwhile, pays about RM50 for water a month. But the neighbour lives with her elderly parents, three children, a maid and about 15 cats.
Water is indeed relatively cheap in Malaysia compared with Singapore and other countries. As such, we tend to pointlessly consume more water. In fact, our consumption per capita is among the highest in the Asean region.
On average, one Malaysian consumes about 280 litres of water daily, a very alarming rate by international standards. This compares with Singapore’s 155 litres, the Philippines’ 175 litres and Indonesia’s 130 litres per person per day.
This is a fact my Singaporean friend readily admits to. He says this is because “from small, we kena drill — water is precious. Nanti Malaysia potong air, mampus kita”. (If Malaysia cuts our water supply, we are dead!)
This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but the Singapore experience of being overdependent on Johor water to one of being almost self-sufficient in water supply, has highlighted the importance of the long-term security of water supply for us in Malaysia.
As such, water security in Malaysia should be regarded as a national issue. There is an urgent need for all the stakeholders — the political governance, the water services industry people, scientists, academics and economic planners — to sit down and come up with measures to ensure our water supply is sustainable in the long run.
The whole water ecosystem is currently beset with myriad issues, according to academics specialising in water management.
The issues include the decentralised water services sector, ineffective governance structure, low and unsustainable tariff rates, huge investments required to develop the water supply and sewerage infrastructure, inefficient operation by operators and high non-revenue water losses.
Listening to a panel of experts discussing the water issue on Friday, I jotted down a few take-aways from the three-hour session: that the water industry should be a cross-cutting, enabling sector; a multidisciplinary and not just a supporting industry.
There should be a nexus between water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity, not looking at each sector in isolation.
The water crisis in the Klang Valley and the onset of the El Nino phenomenon (which is defined by prolonged warming of the Pacific Ocean surface temperatures when compared with the average value) could be game-changers for Malaysia on how it looks at the water sector. In short, this could be a “watershed” year for us.
Right now, we have to grapple with the so-called Federal-state dichotomy (as exemplified by the Selangor water issue), the inability to put a correct value to water, lack of real integrated river basin management and our over-reliance on traditional sources such as surface water, meaning rivers. Unfortunately, some of the main rivers supplying water to the major cities are facing a rapid rate of man-made pollution.One option to diversify sources of water is by tapping groundwater. But experts say there are still grey areas of knowledge in the groundwater resources in this country which hinder the development of appropriate policies.
We have to also start looking at the demand-side of the water management, rather than just the supply-side.
In terms of non-revenue water, the whole exercise has been futile. One possible reason is that the current tariffs are too low and uneconomic.
Experts say the low tariffs discourage new innovations in water reduction technology and run against the aspirations of green technology.
The greater rural-urban migration, the population growth and the growing economic shift from the agrarian to the manufacturing age would mean even greater demand for water, food and energy.
The World Economic Forum has warned that within the next 15 to 20 years, the worsening water security situation risks triggering a global food crisis, with shortfalls of up to 30 per cent in rice and other cereal production.
As such, more thoughts must be placed on the increasingly vital water sector here in Malaysia.