Editorial
Collapsing essential services
Why must agencies await PM's intervention to act?
PRIME Minister Sheikh Hasina has asked the water and electricity suppliers to act quickly and alleviate the sufferings of the city dwellers brought on by chronic scarcity of water and unbearable power failures. The prime minister's directive should have come much earlier. What we feel though, is that smooth delivery of the essential services should never wait for her directives, the PDB and Wasa managers were expected to act out of their own sense of duty and responsibility towards the people.
The already precarious water supply situation in the city is worsening further, as complaints from residents continue to pile up. But scarcity alone is not the problem here. Residents of some areas are reportedly being forced to pay five times the normal price of a lorry of Wasa water. And they have also complained of being threatened with untoward consequences if they raise any question about the exorbitant price! The situation is grim in many other localities as queues for collecting water keep on lengthening.
And, of course, water supplied by Wasa is often found to be unfit for human consumption. And this may have a lot to do with the outbreak of water-borne diseases in the city on a massive scale.
There may be many constraints which make it difficult for the utility service providers to meet the demand of an ever sprawling metropolis. Nevertheless, coordination between the utility agencies can always help improve their performance. As Wasa is dependent on the PDB for supply of electricity, the poor performance of the power sector is affecting water supply system. There should be much better coordination between the two agencies, so that Wasa gets the amount of electricity needed to run the pumps that cannot be operated with the installed capacity of its own generators. But the two organisations have so far failed to attain the desired level of coordination.
The PM's directives should prompt the service providers to formulate an action plan to steer the city out of the present mess, both in the short term and the longer run. However, resource constraints coupled with technical limitations of the existing systems need to be taken into account by the decision makers. In order to find durable solutions to all such problems, long term need-based planning is necessary. At the same time, the agencies should have a crisis management action plan that they must be ready to implement on a short notice.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments