Thursday, October 29, 2009
BUDGET 2010 : Budget's water, energy allocations need focus
Piarapakaran Subramaniam
Oct 29, 09
4:37pm
I refer to the Malaysiakini report PM slashes spending in Budget 2010.
The world community condemns the 'divide and rule' policy used by the colonial powers. However, our water and energy sectors are still being managed in such manner. Both sectors are managed by many parties with minimal integration except for meetings and seminars.
The Water and Energy Consumer Association of Malaysia (Wecam) sees both water and energy as basic needs of the people to survive and they eventually will becomes a national security issue.
On these consumer rights, we urge the federal and state governments to put their differences aside and protect the rakyat. We also urge that both the sectors are to be integrated and managed throughout their life cycles.
The water sector needs to ensure that water catchment areas are protected. State governments should gazette these areas as permanent reserves. There are also issues highlighted by the latest Auditor-General's report on the quality and pricing of water.
In addition to that, wastewater management is still below performance and underutilised. The country's water demand management is also of immediate concern as there are organisations that are pushing for alternative resources such as groundwater with many risky elements overlooked.
The energy sector is also not spared from lack of implementation while Malaysia is facing depleting energy resources. Furthermore, we are still on the learning curve for alternative energy. Energy efficiency - which is a core part of energy management - has not yet been achieved.
The government also made a 'quick policy' on nuclear energy as an option. Besides this, in a recent study conducted by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), they omitted the transportation sector's energy usage. This again proves fragments implementation.
Overall, we did request a balancing fund to mitigate immediate energy resources price fluctuations. This is to ensure there is no immediate fluctuation of energy prices in all sectors to prevent burdening the consumers.
The new Green Technology sector will definitely be challenged to look at both these sectors as the improvement planned for them are placed in the recent National Green Technology Policy release.
Before the country steps forward to achieve Vision 2020, fundamental issues must be solved and we need to build both the energy and water sectors on solid foundation.
In many communications, meeting, seminars, reports and memorandums, we together with Fomca have raised many issues and solutions. We will continue to give constructive views with a technical background to push for changes and enhancement.
Working together does not make any of us less, it only builds us up further. We hope for a strong restructuring of both the water and energy sector to improve implementation efficiency. Merging is definitely an option.
The writer is secretary-general, Water and Energy Consumer Association of Malaysia.
