Water shortage could have been avoided with better planning: Wan Junaidi

SERI KEMBANGAN: Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar has blamed certain former and current federal and state administrators for the water shortage in several states.
The Natural Resources and Environment Minister said those administrators had lacked vision, subsequently allowing the issue of insufficient water supply in the respective states to drag on for years.
He said that despite the country producing a huge amount of rainwater each year - amounting to 107 billion cubic metre - only 10% of the amount was harvested for use.
"There are states with insufficient water, five states in fact. So whats the problem? Maybe we didn't have much money back then.
"But the views of the federal and state administrators were not that visionary either. In the end, this issue of water shortage was not dealt with," he said during his visit to the National Hydraulic Research Institute of Malaysia (Nahrim), here, yesterday.
The minister, however, did not elaborate on the individuals he was referring to.
Later in a press conference, Wan Junaidi explained that the five states with water shortage are Selangor, Kedah, Perlis, Johor and Malacca.
He said the main contributing factors were either that rainwater was not being harvested or rivers that were getting shallower due industrialisation and logging, among other things.
To address this, Wan Junaidi said the ministry is in the midst of setting up a "water balance system", which would allow states with water surplus to transfer some water to those with deficits.
"We are still studying and will present it to the government soon. We will do it in stages. But what's most important is the states must be together in this. We have to discuss because it involves cost," he said.
Wan Junaidi added that he hoped to bring the matter up to parliament as early as this year, after receiving the go-ahead from the Attorney-General's Chambers and the respective states.