Public Backlash Over Private Water Deals
by John Vidal in Dar es Salaam

Hadiya Atheuman, mother of 11 children, was yesterday drawing dirty water from a shallow, hand-dug well in the western outskirts of Dar es Salaam. The coastal city is one of the fastest growing in the world and its water system has utterly failed to provide for the roughly three million people who now live there. Installed in the 1950s, two-thirds of its water leaks from broken pipes or is stolen, and only 60,000 people are connected to the mains.

With no pipes within 30 minutes' walk of Mrs Atheuman's home, everyone must pay water sellers. As in every poor country, the poorer you are, the more you pay for water.

Mrs Atheuman pays up to 12 Tanzanian shillings a liter [about 1.2 US cents]. The middle classes, who buy 10,000 liters of fresh water at a time and have it delivered by tanker, pay less than half that per liter"The result is that the poor are financially penalized, get ill and stay poor," says Rose Mushi, director of ActionAid Tanzania.

Water privatization was meant to solve a world crisis that has left more than two billion people without clean water or sanitation.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the private sector was seen by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and governments like Britain and France as the only way of raising the money needed, and international companies such as Suez, Thames and Biwater, encouraged by the IMF, rushed to privatize the water of the poor.

Many negotiated contracts which gave them monopolies for up to 30 years and guaranteed profits of up to 30-40%. Some companies ended up in the courts, accused of paying bribes to government officials.

Companies were also frequently accused of not delivering on their contracts. Prices shot up, people lost jobs, the poor often did not get the water promised, and discontent grew.

In the past decade there have been riots in Bolivia, after which western water companies were thrown out. There has also been discontent in Trinidad, Argentina, Ghana, South Africa and the Philippines...

The whole article: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0525-07.htm