No water crisis in Sabah, only shortage

KOTA KINABALU: There is no water crisis in Sabah, said State Works Minister Datuk Shahelmey Yahya.

Commenting on Kota Belud Member of Parliament (MP) Isnaraissah Munirah’s lament in a recent Parliament sitting that Sabah is experiencing a water crisis, Shahelmey disagreed as he described calling the current situation a water crisis as an “extreme sentence”.

“What we are facing at the moment is water shortage due to climate change and delays in the implementation of certain projects.

“Besides that, our Non-Revenue Water (NRW) rate is high, with the state at around 50 per cent and Kota Kinabalu at about 38 per cent.

“So if we can bring the NRW rate down to less than 35 percent and if we can implement projects such as the Papar Dam, then we will have stable water supply for the state for the next two or three decades,” he told reporters during a visit to the Limbahau Water Treatment Plant in Papar on Thursday.

However, Shahelmey said another area which they should pay attention to from the planning aspect is the effect of climate change and the impact of economic activities here.

For example, he said opening up lots of land for plantation and such will change the nature of water catchments, possibly for the worse, and these are the things that they need to look into in the planning of the state’s water resources.

In the same vein, he said the State Government will implement, among others, vendor schemes in identified areas here to tackle the issue of illegal water connections and to reduce the state’s NRW rate.

Shahelmey said this when asked to comment on Deputy Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Fadillah Yusof’s recent announcement of an additional RM100 million loan to Sabah to address its water issues, in which Fadillah had highlighted the state’s high NRW level.

He said the State Government is putting in effort to reduce Sabah’s NRW rate, which is caused by old and broken pipes as well as illegal water connections.

He said water theft remains one of their biggest problems, and the State Water Department (JANS) had carried out a major cut-off of illegal connections in Sepanggar two months ago.

He said following the operation, they noticed an increase of water pressure in the area, but he raised his concern that despite the initiative, such activities will occur again in the future.

“Hence, to reduce such cases which relates to the NRW rate, JANS will utilise the total RM300 million loan from the Federal Government to carry out, among others, vendor schemes by implementing bulk water metres and placing static tanks in identified squatter areas here.

So far, this has already been done in Kampung Brunei, Sepanggar, and we have identified three more locations for this effort.

“If we can successfully implement these vendor schemes, the leakage of eight to ten million litres per day (mld) can be returned to the system and enjoyed by consumers in the state,” he said.

What we are facing at the moment is water shortage due to climate change and delays in the implementation of certain projects.

Datuk Shahelmey Yahya