In Malaysia, water tariff is still very low and affordable to all. However less we realized that lately there has been a few cases of water treatment plant shut down due to excessive amount of pollutant. Water catchment area nowadays are prone to pollution by human activities. Worst is when the destruction of catchment area by illegal logger uncontrollably.
When we talk about clearing of forest, less do we realized that those forest doesnt only act as a catchment area and carbon sink which can lead to global warming if it is being redeveloped. One of the example is where a rubber plantation project spanning across 443 hectares that required deforestation at two water intake and treatment plant.
This is the main evident that by planting fertilizer, generous amount of pesticide can easilly leach into soil and groundwater which eventually connected to the rivers or pond. This will then lead to human health risk if there is any uptake of groundwater.
“These chemicals cannot be present inside your water and the treatment cost for it is high. The moment you have ammonia pollution you have to shut down the water treatment plant, this had happened to water treatment plants at Sungai Nilai and Sungai Langat, which had to be shut down because of ammonia pollution.
DON'T BLAME CLIMATE CHANGE.....climate change does necessary lead to the crisis such as draught, flood and other effect. It is human activity that play a major role in addressing this issues.
“And the system is straight forward - if we disturb our forests, it impacts our water supply.”
In Malaysia, climate change affect us in a way where “We may have more rain or, we might not have rain at all. "When the fluctuation of rain is disturbed, the survival of a tropical country is disturbed. This is because the rainfall does not support ground water. “In a Glacier system (a country with four seasons), the recharge rate is higher because the snow melts slowly. "Here the forests are capturing most of the water, and helping us by releasing it slowly. For example, if it rains in KL, the Klang River level goes up. But when it's raining there, the level here is very low," As such, the river only floods after two hours because of the delay, which is a natural process. But when we destroy the forest, this delay time is reduced.The consequences are lack of water supply, increasing tariff and poor water supply quality so much so that consumers have to fix their own water filters.
This was an article adopted from The Star on water crisis and climate change in Malaysia.
But still, in Malaysia, the price to get clean water is still very cheap. That's why we have less appreciation of clean water and awareness to care and preserve it. In general, we can get it cheaply anywhere we go in Malaysia. As one of our lecturers said, we are not going to see any change in malaysians' attitute towards clean water until the government price it at a much higher cost. Even with the 'World Water Day' advertisement playing on TV today, I don't think it brings any behavioral change to those who're watching it. Also, not many people outside there know the fact that by 2050 or so, a third of the people on Earth may lack a clean, secure source of water.
ReplyDeleteMy own experience when I go back to my 'kampung' which is one of the felda in Pahang did contribute to my appreciation of clean water. You know what, almost every hari raya and school holiday, there will be short supply of water. Even if they get the water supply, it is not a clean one. You can easily tell from the color.
Just to add to this:
ReplyDeleteIn 2004, when I served in the National Service programme. We were required to 'gotong-royong' in a Orang Asli Village. As I spoke to the villagers, I found out that they had recently received electrical supply to their homes a few months back. To me, it was difficult to swallow. How was it possible that parts of Malaysia still did not have access to electricity. I then asked what about their water supply. I was told the same, that they had recently received water supply from the government.
And just an hour and a half drive away was the big city, KUALA LUMPUR! City folks need to live in a resource limited village for a few days to fully appreciate everything we are provided with in the city.
The first issue is about the tariff to low for Malaysian citizen. Malaysian government always takes care of our welfare properly as we take the gift as granted as ever. Water, electricity, petrol, rice and many other things have been put under subsidies as important materials to Malaysian as we considered to be a under develop country (country which has depends a lot on agriculture compare to United States) which still depends on our government to survive. However, are we ready to have to pay more towards things like water, rice, electricity and all the things that have been subsidize by our government? From my observation, when our last PM (Pak Lah) increases the value of our oil from Rm1.80 to Rm2.50 per liter of petrol, we start to complain and criticize the government of not being relevance in managing the high petrol prices. The attitude of our people cannot be change or can be change but you have to rely on force.
ReplyDeleteMalaysian government doesn’t have the guts to take action on the water tariff . In the article of "National Geographic" Article Review.....Earth's Fresh Water Under Pressure……(sorry, taken from our friend article). The main example of water used, how it is used and how it is wasted, two facts come out; specifically that 10% of water use is for household use and 70% for agricultural use. Just think and broaden your minds up, the fact is still out there but generally is quiet reasonable. 60-70 % of Malaysia’s land involves in plantation industry, and lots of water needed to accommodate photosynthesis. Maybe we are not to be blame on this as government should be able to construct a reasonable plan to align up all together.
The second issue on deforestation result in water catchment pollutes which prone to human less healthy or becoming sick, should not be point to the government only. The things have to do with the urbanization development plus with the lack of proper planning and experts in dealing with the matter be the main reason behind the incident happened. Greater urbanization, the demand for land for factories, and other building are all reasons leading to deforestation brings negative impacts to carbon adsorption and water catchment area cannot be used as our water source. From the article taken from Department Of Environmental Malaysia’s impact magazine, the deforestation is said to be blamed for 25% of all carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, by cutting and burning of about 34 million acres of tress each year. Can you imagine how much deforestration has damage our water catchmanet area with the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere because of deforestration? Trees gives shades and the only places which provide us the main water source, together with oxygen supply and function to take up carbon dioxide to balance things up. Without trees we are totally expose this hazard, so as a community we have to make sure that we responsible as preventing this deforestration not to happen. The environmental impacts assessment have to be perform to analyze all factors that may result in damaging our forest before any development or deforestration activities can be perform. The public in an increasing number of population, have become more aware and unwilling to trust government to protect the environment.
From my experience, clean water in terms of drinking water standard it is vastly available in penisular malaysia and this lead to the low cost of water. Even so, the government is now actively looking groundwater sources to add on the water supply in our country. From my opinion the government should indeed increase the water tariff to reduce the wastage of water as our current trend of water usage is on the rise. with the increase in tariff, malaysian will be more appreciative of clean water in our country.
ReplyDeleteI really don't agree with the idea of increasing the price of clean water in order to make people to appreciate water more. If the price of clean water supply hikes, then what will happen to those poor, always-appreciating-water people? Why should they have to pay for other people's fault?
ReplyDeleteThe main problem here is people's attitude. In order to overcome this problem, they need to be educated. Persistence is needed when educating the public. Even if the price of clean water is being increased by the government, I am sure that it will not make much difference. People will continue to waste water in places where they will not be charged for the total amount of water usage. Places like public toilets, restaurants, hotels and motels, campus and universities, schools, offices, and many more. People will not care how much water they used at these places because it's not them who's going to pay for it.