Poor pay more to get sufficient clean water
Poor pay more to get sufficient clean water
By T. Sima Gunawan
ISTANBUL, Turkey (JP): Poor people in Jakarta and other big
cities of developing countries have to pay between 10 and 20
times more to get safe water as they do not have access to
subsidized piped water, the World Bank stated here yesterday.
Ismail Serageldin, World Bank Vice President for
Environmentally Sustainable Development, told a discussion on
Water for Thirsty Cities that 32 percent of Jakarta's population
have to buy clean water from vendors because the government can
only provide piped water to 14 percent of the population. The
other 54 percent of the population get water from tapped wells.
The discussion was held in conjunction with the UN Conference
on Human Settlements (Habitat II), which will end on June 14.
Some 220 million poor urban people in developing countries do
not have access to safe water and an estimated 420 million have
no access to basic sanitation services. By 2010 the urban
population is estimated to reach 4 billion, with 1.4 billion
having no access to basic services.
Serageldin said that 8 percent of Singapore's potable water is
wasted because of pipe leakages, but in many cities of other
countries 40 percent to 60 percent of potable water is wasted.
Fifty-seven percent of Jakarta's water is wasted. Other cities
with high rates of wasted piped water include Dhaka (62 percent),
Manila (58 percent) and Seoul (42 percent).
Due to the lack of clean water, many urban poor drink
contaminated water. It is estimated that the costs of impaired
health from unsafe drinking water in Jakarta reaches US$300
million a year.
"Many cities could see illness drop by 30 percent, with
productivity rising accordingly, if the poor could be supplied
with uncontaminated water," Serageldin said.
The lack of clean water, particulate air pollution, and lead
are three major problems in the growing crisis of an urban
environment that inflict billions of losses in developing
countries.
In Jakarta, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur the annual costs from
dust and lead pollution are estimated at $5 billion, or about 10
percent of the cities' combined incomes, Caoio Koch-Weser,
managing director of the World Bank, said earlier this week in
the plenary address at the UN Conference on Human Settlements.
"That is the accumulative number for the three cities, but I
don't have the specific number for Jakarta," he said on Tuesday.
Environmental cleanup is one of the three interrelated
priorities of public policies to deal with urban development
problems. The other two are urban finance and poverty reduction.
Koch-Weser said that increased reliance on the private sector
and local initiative is the only way that vast investment needs
of the developing world's cities and towns can be met.
"It is already happening in the fastest growing areas of Asia
and Latin America, with many cities privatizing or contracting
out of the private sector service such as power, water, garbage
collection and transportation," he said.
In poverty reduction, he said, the governments should respect
the rights of the poor to live and work in the city.
"The government should stop using the bulldozer and forced
evictions as policy instruments," he said.
Building codes and regulations should encourage innovation and
low-cost approaches and provide the poor with access to property
rights, he added.
The Kampong Improvement Program, which started in Jakarta,
has improved the living conditions of 15 million people over a
25-year period, he said.
In Jakarta, however, some of the kampongs have been
demolished.
Koch-Weser said that the World Bank is ready to do more urban
projects in Indonesia other than the Kampong Improvement Program,
but he emphasized that the loans must be used properly.
"We have very stringent conditions to our loans and to make
sure that they are properly used," he said.
Since 1972, the World Bank has invested in $25 billion in more
than 5,000 cities and towns. It plans to lend an additional $15
billion for urban projects for the next five years.