Stop the plunder of Lanka’s pure water
In the past, bottlers of fresh fruit drinks encouraged the local fruit industry to plant and bought the fresh fruit from the producers. Not so today, even the local fresh fruit drink bottlers have moved on, they don’t buy anything locally.
Instead, hundreds of container loads of cheap fruit pulp are imported from India and mixed with fresh clean Sri Lankan water. A small quantity is sold in the local market and the rest is exported.
As the water in India is suspected to be badly polluted, many Indian companies are relocating in Sri Lanka through the many concessions afforded by the Board of Investment, just to gain access to the unlimited supplies of clean water and to avert the cost of purifying their water.
They import container loads of fruit pulp from India, mix it with clean fresh water extracted from the ground using deep wells with minimal purification and export it back to India and elsewhere. They do not pay one cent for the precious water they extract. Sri Lanka and the people of Sri Lanka do not benefit from their presence, as the precious water is being given away free. This is obscene. These companies are mostly automated, employ a minimal number of workers, mostly Indian and are concerned only in the maximum profit they make.
With the world going into an extremely serious water crisis in the future, there could be even wars for water. The United States space agency NASA has warned that California’s water will only last for one more year.
Instead of protecting and preserving the future water security of this country, we dish it out for free. This does not mean that water should be paid for either. No, the export of water should be banned.
The indiscriminate pumping of water has affected the water quality in surrounding village wells and significantly reduced the water table. It came to a head with the villages in the vicinity of a factory complaining that they had lost their sources of water.
If the Government has any interest in the people of this country, their future and the generations to come, it should take urgent measures to ensure the water security of this country and advise the BOI and other approving agencies to discourage or stop giving permission to any individual or company that exports water. Those who have been already given permission should be instructed to stop operations within a given period of time.
Access to clean potable water is the birthright of the citizens of this country. If it is not protected now, tomorrow will be too late.
Ashley de Vos