Water cut ruins Winter Solstice celebration
FOR the first time in recent memory, I was not able to celebrate the Winter Solstice Festival properly on Dec 22, no thanks to the unscheduled water cut following the closure of the Semenyih water treatment plant.
My family and I value our Chinese heritage and we make it a point to celebrate the festival each year by making glutinous rice balls.
For some Chinese, the Winter Solstice Festival is an even more important date than Chinese New Year. Our celebrations this year were ruined as the taps ran dry.
We can understand if Air Selangor conducts periodic maintenance or even if this was a one-off occurrence due to an unforeseen mishap. But the unscheduled and prolonged cuts have been so frequent, one cannot help but doubt Air Selangor’s competence.
Water is a basic necessity. For a country on the cusp of attaining developed nation status, having supply cut off at irregular intervals makes us the butt of jokes.
To make matters worse, given how frequently such cuts occur, one would have thought that Air Selangor would have a wellthought-out contingency plan for such crises. Alas, water tankers were not deployed fast enough.
In other countries, a crisis of such magnitude occurring so frequently would have seen heads roll. Air Selangor and the Selangor government should own up to their shortcomings. Water supply falls under the state’s jurisdiction and there is only so much the Federal Government can do to alleviate this.
For example, water tariffs are determined by the respective state governments. But if the Selangor government continues to have reservations about increasing tariffs for political reasons, then it would have insufficient funds to carry out maintenance or map out long-term water supply plans.
As of now, many households in Selangor are not paying a single sen for their water supply. I am sure many would not mind paying a nominal sum to ensure continuous supply.
The Selangor government and Air Selangor need to get their house in order to ensure taps continue to flow. Otherwise, we’d be back to square one in no time.