THAILAND: Lack of Access to Clean Water Still Hounds Rural Areas

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Nov 17 2003 (IPS) - Despite its ample rainfall and abundant rivers, Thailand has been unable to wash away one stain that troubles water experts – the fact that close to one in three people are deprived of clean drinking water in their homes.

This reality is stark when compared with this country’s glowing achievements in supplying electricity to its people, says Apichart Anukularmphai, chairman of the South-east Asia committee of the Global Water Partnership. ”Because over 90 percent of Thais have been supplied with electricity.”

In fact, some reports estimate that close to 99 percent of Thailand’s 70,000 villages have electricity, in addition to all the urban centres being linked to this South-east Asia nation’s power grid.

According to a U.N. study, Thailand towers above neighbouring Burma, Cambodia, Laos and even Vietnam in its per capita consumption of power. While Thailand consumes 1,448 kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity per capita, Vietnam ranks lower, with 286 kwh of electricity per capita, and Burma even lesser, with 68 kwh per capita.

”Why can the government do it with electricity but not with water?” asked Apichart at a workshop for local journalists on the eve of a regional water conference ongoing this week in Chiang Mai, a city nestling in the mountains on northern Thailand.

This issue is expected to be one of the many challenges to be scrutinised at the first-ever South-east Asia Water Forum, which runs from Nov. 17 to 21. Close to 500 delegates representing a broad range of policymakers, academics, activists, and community leaders from over 20 countries are attending the meeting.

Views held by the likes of Wanchai Ghooprasert, governor of the Provincial Waterworks Authority, will be part of the debate. According to him, the story of water deprivation in Thailand is largely a rural affair, since a lack of public funds to keep afloat efficient local water supply schemes is a major reason why close to 20 million Thais lack water security.

”Every year, not less than seven billion baht (176.7 million U.S. dollars) must be invested to ensure water supply from the source to the tap in the areas outside Bangkok,” Wanchai told IPS. ”But as of now, the government gives us two billion baht (50.5 million dollars) and we earn a further two billion baht from revenue.”

The Ping River, which flows through this city, Thailand’s second largest, illustrates the challenge Wanchai’s organisation faces. On the one hand, the Ping River is one of three water sources for Chiang Mai, but on the other, its brown waters are polluted by the time it reaches the city from its head stream – some 100 kilometres away in a mountain along the Thai-Burmese border.

”Most pollution is from domestic, local community sources,” Wasan Jonpakdee, of Chiang Mai University’s faculty of engineering, told IPS. ”The river water around Chiang Mai is not good for drinking, cooking and swimming. It has to be treated.”

The annual dry season adds to Chiang Mai’s perennial water woes. ”During this period, Chiang Mai residents have a drinking water problem,” said Wasan. ”The people living beyond the city have to depend on wells and ground water sources for their supplies.”

By contrast, a new report released at this week’s regional water forum bubbles with praise for Bangkok’s achievements in providing a steady flow of drinking water for its citizens when set against other sprawling cities across Asia.

In most Asian cities, only 30 percent of the population receive piped water in their homes, while 72 percent of Bangkok’s population receive piped water, states ‘Asian Water Supplies – Reaching the Urban Poor’, published by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

Dhaka, New Delhi, Jakarta, and Ho Chi Minh City were among the urban centres across Asia that the report says are unable to meet local water demands. However the report’s author, Arthur McIntosh, argues that every Asian city has the ability to ”provide 24-hour piped water supply to every home”.

The Bangkok metropolis is home to 5.7 million of Thailand’s 62 million population, and, according a U.N. study, the Thai capital has an estimated 1.9 million households.

At the same time, though, Bangkok’s authorities have been taken to task by the Pollution Control Department for not doing enough to address the ocean of waste it generates, consequently polluting the waters that flow through it, like the Chao Phraya River.

”Bangkok generates close to 200 million cubic metres of waste a day, but the waste water treatment capacity is only 20 percent,” Wijarn Simachaya, director at the bureau of water quality management at the Population Control Department told journalists during the weekend’s workshop. ”That is why the Chao Phraya River (which runs through Bangkok) is so black.”

According to Apichart, the remedy to the country’s water woes lies in an integrated approach, with all government agencies on water closing ranks to deal with the various competing demands for water, including water for consumption, for agriculture and for industry. ”We need a new mindset,” he asserted.