Diterbitkan: 2010/3/22 – The Star

By Tan Sri Rozali Ismail

MALAYSIA’s economic expansion over the past decades, changing lifestyles, coupled with population growth reaching more than 27 million people are among the key factors contributing to the need for vast improvement in infrastructure and utilities of the country.

With increasing per capita income, continuous supply of safe affordable clean treated drinking water is now a necessity, not only for the urban dwellers but also the rural areas.

Budget 2010 saw the Government’s allocation of RM9 billion to finance infrastructure projects, including construction of roads and bridges, water supply, sewerage services, rail facilities, ports and sea services as well as airport projects.

Of this total, 29% or RM2.6 billion has been allocated for water supply and sewerage services.

The recently released Malaysian Water Industry Guide 2009 shows that 91% of Malaysians are provided with piped water while the states of Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak recorded population access to piped water of only 54%, 76% and 78% respectively.

As such, more concerted efforts should be made to improve the water infrastructure for these areas since access to piped water is a basic necessity as our nation progresses to a developed country status.

The Water Demand and Supply Pattern In Malaysia for the past 30 years showed that demand for piped water supply, based on production for Malaysia grew at an average compounded rate of 8%, from 407 million litres per day (mld) in 1960 to 13,243 mld in 2008.

More people have access to piped water with the increase in pipe length from 22,000km in 1978 to 118,579km in 2008, with 6.06 million connections.

The urban areas have reached 96.5%, while the rural areas have improved to 85.3%. In 1970, only 36% of the population had access to piped water.

Efforts to provide 100% of the population with access to piped water requires a high level of commitment from both the public and private sectors, where more Public Private Participation (PPP) projects should be expedited to achieve this cause.

Demand for treated water in the Klang Valley, which comprises Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya has been on an uptrend from 127 mld in 1960 to 3,889 mld in 2008.

With the present production capacity and growing demand, the Klang Valley is projected to face water supply shortage as early as 2010.

The situation will get worst in the event of prolonged drought similar to that of the 1998 water crisis, forcing the Government to take drastic measures such as using water sources from lakes, ponds and cloud seeding.

The 1998 water crisis and subsequent intermitten water shortages in the past years, had prompted the Government to ensure sustainability of the nation’s water supply, which include the Pahang-Selangor interstate water transfer, building of new dams, alternative sources of water such as rainwater harvesting, groundwater water exploration, water conservation campaign and so on.

Even though Malaysia is blessed with abundant fresh water from its lakes and rivers, most of these water courses are severely polluted, making it costly to treat for drinking water supply.

Adding to the dilemma is the rapid depletion of our catchments areas, all in the name of economic development, which in turn resulted in lower quality of fresh water.

This situation has caused the water treatment operators to face daily challenges to ensure the ability to provide sustainable water supply to serve the nation’s needs.

The current water crisis in Kedah, Negri Sembilan, Johor and Sabah is a good example of how climate will affect the consistency in water supply service.

This factor has been another challenge for us to provide a better water management service in this country.

With water treatment plants running at full design capacity, Puncak Niaga and Syabas have embarked on strict operating procedures in balancing the needs for scheduled maintenance of the water treatment and distribution systems in order to minimize interruptions to water supply for the Klang Valley.

Thus, scheduling of maintenance and repair works have always been based on priorities and urgency, and with stringent treated water quality standard, it is indeed a daunting task to be achieved.

Malaysia’s piped water quality complies with the Drinking Water Standard adopted by the developed nations and all water operators must comply with the National Standard For Drinking Water Quality (NSFDWQ) as set by Ministry of Health Malaysia.

NSFDWQ covers five main components, which are more comprehensive than the requirements as set out by the World Health Organization. 

Nevertheless, the water quality monitoring conducted at the WTPs is much more stringent with its raw, settled and treated water being monitored on hourly, two-hourly and daily for the critical parameters such as pH, turbidity, colour, free residual chlorine, fluoride, aluminium, bacteriological and ammonia.

Besides manual WQ monitoring, some bigger and critical WTPs are also equipped with online anlyser for real time WQ monitoring of the raw and treated water. 

In addition to WQ monitoring by the WTP operators, the WQ monitoring at WTPs are also being closely monitored by external parties such as the Health Ministry's Public Health and Dental Departments, and local authorities such as Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL).

Based on the monitoring programme for year 2008/2009 by the Ministry of Health, Selangor and Terengganu had achieved the best performance for drinking water quality with drinking water quality compliance of 98.8%.

Besides WQ monitoring, Puncak Niaga had also taken the initiative to carry out plant improvement works to ensure plant reliability and enhance treated water quality. 

The works include upgrading of the WTPs’ laboratory, filter refurbishment works at 12 WTPs, improvement works at the intake, flocculation tank and sedimentation tank, replacement and refurbishment of pumping equipment and upgrade of chlorination systems.

Notwithstanding the above, works categorized as Capital Works such as to upgrade the treatment process and plant capability have been identified for all the WTPs operated by PNSB and the Government's decision to proceed with the CAPEX had been put on hold pending the restructuring of the water services industry in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.

Tan Sri Rozali Ismail is the president of Water Association of Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. He is also the Executive Chairman of Puncak Niaga Holdings Berhad Group with subsidiaries, Puncak Niaga (M) Sdn Bhd and Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd.