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Keng Yaik should accede to requests of MPs and NGOs for a Parliamentary Select Committee on the two water bills if it is true that he is now a new convert to “no federalization, no privatization” for the water services industry Media Conference (4) by Lim Kit Siang (Parliament, Wednesday): Yesterday, the Minister for Energy, Water and Communications Datuk Seri Dr. Lim Keng Yaik asked why the Coalition Against Water Privatisation comprising 127 NGOs, led by MTUC and FOMCA, was demonstrating against privatization outside Parliament House when the Government had already changed its mind and will adopt the NGOs’ recommendations on water management. Keng Yaik admitted that he had spoken about the privatization and federalization of Malaysia’s water industry at a FOMCA forum in July last year, but the government had since changed its stance as the idea was not feasible.
He said the privatization and federalization idea had been proposed by the National Water Council in 2003 and a visit by his ministry’s officials to Britain found that the privatization scheme there had worked well. However, after consultation with NGOs and state governments, his Ministry decided to change the strategy.
Keng Yaik is quite an unique operator, who could accept the recommendations of the NGOs without the NGOs knowing about it, to the extent that they had to mount a massive demonstration against water privatization outside Parliament House yesterday because of the impending approval of the two water bills by the Cabinet next Wednesday.
Is this because Keng Yaik had so successfully kept as a top state secret his acceptance in toto of the NGO’s case of water management and state reform to the extent that NGOs have no inkling about it, or is it because his Ministry’s consultation with NGOs had been so minimal as to be non-existing raising credibility questions as to whether the Minister’s conversion to the NGO case for water management is genuine or otherwise?
His illogical argument that the Amendment to the Federal Constitution to include water in the concurrent list with states means there could be no federalization and no privatization has not helped to enhance his credibility.
This was why at the parliamentary roundtable on water privatization organized by the Parliamentary Opposition Leader’s Office on 10th June 2005, I had asked whether the government was conducting privatization of the water services without using the word “privatization”.
Be that as it may, let me tell Keng Yaik that there is great wariness among the NGOs and the civil society as to whether he is telling the whole truth that his Ministry is adopting the NGO case for water management.
I for my part am prepared to set aside my own wariness and publicly welcome Keng Yaik’s late conversion to the cause of “no privatization, no federalization” in the water services in the country.
Keng Yaik should accede to requests of MPs and NGOs for a Parliamentary Select Committee if it is true that he is now a new convert to “no federalization, no privatization” for the water services industry, and he should ask the Cabinet approval for the establishment of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the two water bills in the current meeting of Parliament.
Now that Keng Yaik has become a new convert to the NGO cause of “No privatization, No federalization” for the water services, what new reason has he got to continue to oppose the establishment of a Parliamentary Select Committee on the two water bills?
(22/06/2005)
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