The facility along the Papar river – a key source of raw water for the district – had to be shut down in mid-February as low river levels allowed seawater to travel 13km upstream to where the plant was located and contaminate the raw water supply.
The response from the authorities was a mixed bag. In early March, Deputy Chief Minister Shahelmey Yahya dismissed claims of a water crisis, telling reporters it was only a “shortage” caused by climate change and delays in water-related projects.
Just days later, local authorities declared a drought emergency and mobilised an army of trucks carrying water tanks to send water to the main town and dozens of villages in the vast district nearly twice the size of Singapore, while the government scrambled to restore supply.
If one were to do a quick scan of news headlines on water supply in Sabah over the past few years, it would show this was a crisis waiting to happen.
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The current state government had said climate change could trigger future crises if nothing was done to fix Sabah’s ailing water infrastructure.
But this was just lip service for residents who have had to deal with regular water rationing long before the current crisis.
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The affected water treatment plant along the Papar river, which the district’s MP said earlier this week is back in operation, is supposed to serve as an emergency facility to back up the primary plant further upstream.
Instead, the emergency plant became the primary supplier for areas within its serviceable radius, due to low output from the main facility.
The UN said in January, only 80.5 per cent of Sabah’s estimated population of 3.6 million had access to safely managed drinking water, compared with the national average of 95 per cent. The rate was just 61 per cent in some rural areas in Sabah.
The effects of increasingly frequent adverse weather events are not limited to Sabah.
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But blaming the weather will do nothing to help better the lot of millions of people still bereft of access to basic amenities such as potable water and stable electricity supply, more than six decades after Sabah helped form the Malaysian federation.
Earlier this year, the federal government approved 400 million ringgit in total allocations to manage Sabah’s perennial water issues.
The time for finger-pointing is over. It is time for Sabah’s politicians to show and tell.