A primary school/elementary level bad joke:
Teacher: What is the scientific term used for water?
Student: HIJKLMNO
Class: Ha ha ha
Bad jokes aside...
There has been talk earlier this year that the state I live in will be facing a severe water shortage by 2014 unless the state government allows the federal government to go ahead with their plan of building a new water treatment plant. The state government insists that we do not need a new water treatment plant as reducing the current wastage from the present operational water treatment plants will actually be able to cover the projected shortage.
Enter SYABAS, the private water concessionaire who is in charge of the distribution of treated water who shamelessly suggested that water should be rationed from now to prevent the acute water shortage. An article I read *here states that the previous government left behind a very complicated system where water is treated by several different companies, while Syabas is in charge of distribution. Based on what I can see/read, the whole system is inefficient, where potential to **leak is high. There's plenty of room for improvement with the current facilities, and before even thinking of getting new facilities, the wise move will be to upgrade and increase efficiency of what we have at the moment. It's common sense.
What annoys me the most about this matter is the way the current state government is being accused by the mainstream media of being the bad guys who will lead the people of the state I live in to a world where clean water will be unavailable. To make things worse, you have public water rationing pleas by companies like Syabas, which seems to be private only in name and not in practice. The latest news on the other hand states that the federal government in trying to intervene with forming a committee to dig deeper into this water issue - but guess what, this committee does not have any representatives from the state government. There has been statements issued by various groups requesting non-politicising of the water crisis, but take a look at what's happening in the papers (mainstream media) and you can see that this is an all out war considering that the general elections are kind of just around the corner.
*The site has plenty of good articles because it extracts stuff from the local papers, but it has too
many pop up ads.
** water and $$$
if the had maintained that plant well, you think this would have happened ? it was working more than it should at one point i think.
ReplyDeletebtw, love the look of your blog :)
DeleteTo be honest, I have no idea what happened in the past as nothing was highlighted in the papers. Awareness only transpired about 6 years ago or so.
DeleteAnd thanks. I like to experiment with he blogs look from time to time.
i am bad at this but how do i get nice templates ? i mean apart from the boring ones from blogger.
DeleteI sent you an e-mail regarding this (the address attached to your blogger profile) Hope that helps :)
DeleteThere is constant bickering here over our inefficient and leaky water storage and supply system. There are so many vested interests it's difficult to know who is telling the truth.
ReplyDeleteSounds like something that happens here as well. Sigh.
DeleteWhich is why we MUST vote them out!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, definitely. I can't stand all this nonsense anymore. I've never hated reading the papers as much as I do now.
DeleteI do think that clean water is a necessity, so I can only hope that the state government does what it needs to do to make sure there isn't a water shortage. Getting the system sorted would really help though, and may even save money and fix the problem.
ReplyDeleteYes, there's a lot of work the state govt needs to do. I do hope thy get to do it without too much interference.
DeleteIf they spent less time bickering and more time making it work right there would be no problem. Once again it's all about $$$.
ReplyDeleteExactly. I also think that people should be allowed to do thir job properly without everyone poking their noses
DeleteI hate the idea of something as basic as water being used for profit.
ReplyDeleteThat's what the state govt says as well. They allow each household to get the first 20 cubic meters free.
ReplyDeleteHow frustrating that getting people clean water is an issue! I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing if the resources are depleting or something. Infrastructure should never been an issue. Sometimes I think that companies like these need some crazy advisers who will push all these inefficient people to exhaustion.
DeleteI like that joke at the beginning, lol.
ReplyDeleteHa ha... I did too - a long time ago, hence why I remembered it.
DeleteThe whole system is inefficient? Sounds like politics to me.
ReplyDeleteYes, it sure does.
DeleteStuff like this reminds me of old articles I read that claim that one day water will be worth more than gold.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about gold, but about 10 years ago, my Thermo lecturer had a good laugh at how bottled water was more expensive than petrol litre for litre.
DeleteHe was laughing at us since we carried bottled water to class.