Assurance of quality, safe water in Sabah rural areas

KUALA LUMPUR: The National Water Services Commission (SPAN) is working with the Health Ministry (MoH) to ensure quality and safe water supply in the rural areas, especially in Sabah and Sarawak, the Dewan Rakyat was told yesterday.

Deputy Water, Land and Natural Resources Minister Tengku Zulpuri Shah Raja Puji said the cooperation was implemented through the water safety plan to address risks that could affect water quality from source to home users.

“The water safety plan is a method introduced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) where the operators will periodically analyse the water quality at the treatment plants as well as at the distribution systems involving physical, chemical and bacteriological parameters,” he said in a question-and-answer session in the House.

He was responding to a question from Datuk Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid (PH-Kapar) who wanted to know the government’s commitment to carry out water quality monitoring for domestic purposes in remote areas such as Sabah, Sarawak and the states in the east coast.

Tengku Zulpuri Shah said the monitoring would be jointly carried out by the water operator and MoH to ensure that the water supply complied with the minimum quality standards set out in the national water quality guidelines.

Meanwhile, he said cooperation with the state governments in the east coast would be intensively carried out to address water pollution.

“Among the main causes of water impurities are logging and farming. From the survey, we also found that the plantations activities have been carried out without following the guidelines.

“Hence, the existing treatment plant can’t process the water and it is in a state of distress. We still process it but the water produced is slightly murky,” he said.