DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Worries Rise with ‘Water Reforms’

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Dec 8 2003 (IPS) - Sri Lankan rights groups may have won a temporary respite in the battle against the privatisation of water services after a court held in their favour, but the campaign against what critics call the equivalent of selling the family silver is far from over.

Plagued by an inefficient public sector and guided by World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies of privatising state assets, Sri Lankan authorities are gradually selling off or handing over management to the private sector utility services including water, power, telecommunications and the post.

After water, power services are next in line for privatisation.

”We are selling the family silver,” said Sarath Fernando, coordinator of the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR).

Fernando, whose group last week organised a demonstration against privatisation of water services in Colombo and a discussion with politicians and social activists on the same issue, said social unrest has increased in the past two years since the ruling United National Party (UNP) came to power in December 2001.

This is because the UNP, which is acceptable to the public due to its success on the peace front to end a two-decade-old ethnic conflict, is using this to push through economic liberalisation as quickly as possible, he said.

Some 3,000 farmers, plantations workers and peasants gathered in Colombo last week outside the city’s main railway station to protest ‘water reforms’, saying access to water is a human right and should not be used for commercial gain.

In early November, the Supreme Court rejected a water services reforms bill which details water management measures, saying that it needs the approval of provincial councils as it involves their assets too.

Under the bill – whose defeat activists consider a victory – the Public Utilities Commission would sell licences to the private sector to manage water bodies and charge the public for the service.

In effect, the bill would have the government hand over control of primary water sources like rivers and reservoirs to water supply companies who then decide whom they should charge and what price, critics say.

MONLAR’s Fernando says that the government can amend now the bill, in line with the court ruling, and still get it passed.

”We may have won the first hurdle against the bill but the battle still goes on,” he said. He warned that if provincial councils are given rights to earn revenues from licensing water bodies, they would eagerly endorse the bill.

Fernando says privatising water services would deny thousands of people access to clean tap water and plunge them deeper into poverty.

But government officials defend the proposed legislation, saying interest groups have misjudged the situation and misinterpreted privatisation to mean losing total control over natural resources.

Proponents argue that it is meant to improve efficiency, cut wastage and in the end, put a value on a resource like water to help its sustainable use.

”We are not privatising water – it’s only the services. Even now we charge for the service, not for water. There has to be a cost on treatment plants, infrastructure, etcetera,” explained W D Aillapperuma, secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Plantation Infrastructure.

But Ruana Rajepakse, whose arguments on the water bill in court help win the first round for water rights campaigners, said: "Water is indispensable for all life and it is a gift of the nature to all living beings. No government has a right to convert it into private property or a marketable commodity.”

In truth, there has been restiveness in recent years over services like transport, health and railways as well.

Recent proposals to ‘reform’ the health sector, including by closing unviable state hospitals, have run into opposition, forcing health ministry officials to postpone a ceremony last month where the reforms report was to be handed over to Health Minister P Dayaratne.

Under power sector reforms, the giant state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board will sell marketing and distribution rights to private companies.

Attempts to privatise the government’s postal department a few years ago was opposed by strikes by postal workers and abandoned, but trade unions fear the government is just biding its time before launching reforms here too.

Critics say the government is pursuing a World Bank-promoted agenda of speeding up reforms in water, creating a land market where uneconomic farmers can sell their land and the power sector – under the cover of the peace process.

The UNP is using the peace dividend in the form of a halt to violence, killings and improved economic activity to push through these ‘reforms’, Fernando said. World Bank officials have denied the charge.

Leel Gunasekera, president of the Federation of Consumer Associations in Sri Lanka, said water is the gift of life. ”You can’t charge something that nature has provided. This is the bane of globalisation,” he said.

Critics add that the privatisation of water services would affect the urban poor who mostly live in slums where water is supplied free on public standpipes.

Chaminda Warusavitharana, a driver, says his family collects water from a roadside tap in a heavily populated settlement in Colombo. "If are already struggling to make ends meet. If water costs are added, that would increase the burden."

Other middle class dwellers get water connections to their homes and pay a nominal fee to local authorities.

Amid the uproar, the government has assured that the poor would not have to pay for water and only the rich would be taxed.

But still sceptical, activists say that if the water bill gets the approval of the provincial councils in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, they are ready to go back to court and argue that water is a basic human right and not a commodity.

Fernando says privatisation of water and power services would affect some 1.8 million farmers or nine million people – almost half Sri Lanka’s population. About one million are rice farmers.