All wars fought today by developed countries, are
caused by oil. In next ten to fifteen years, the most expensive commodity that
will cause these monsters to blow up every body, will be fresh water. If you
have a huge body of fresh waters as we do in the great lakes, there is a B52
made just for your village.
Em
The Mulindwas communication
group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 11:58
AM
Subject: [Mwananchi] Water privatization
has been a failure all over the world
Water privatization has been
a failure all over the world
Author:
Savannah Blackwell Date Written: 6 November 2002
Summary
& Comment: While the people of Ghana suffer, guess who stands to benefit?
None other than San Francisco's own Bechtel Corp., which, along with the
French companies Vivendi, Saur, and Suez and the U.K.'s Biwater, is vying to
take over Ghana's system at a potentially handsome profit. This is quite
vicious and blatant," Rudolf Amenga-Etego, the national campaign coordinator
of Ghana's National Coalition Against the Privatization of Water, told us in a
recent interview. He was in town promoting the fight against water
privatization. Note interesting parallels with the USA, where only 15% of
water supply is privatized; again with negative results. There is a longer
exposition of the problem of water privatization at: http://www.bankindex.com/recentnews.asp?or=5
JM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Water privatization has been a failure all over the world - but
companies like Bechtel haven't given up .
THE PEOPLE OF Ghana are in trouble.
During the rainy season, cholera cases reach epidemic proportions in Accra,
the nation's capital. Nearly half of the recorded visits to health facilities
in 2000 were related to malaria. And the number of people infected
by guinea worm is rising to the point where entire communities face economic
devastation.
All of these diseases are
attributable to the same fundamental problem: lack of access to clean,
drinkable water. And the reason the rates of illness are increasing, activists
say, is because many people, mostly the poor, have been cut off from water
supplies in the country's move toward privatizing its entire water system.
In 1998 officials at the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund told Ghanaian government officials that if
they wanted $400 millions in loans to rebuild the publicly owned and
controlled water system, they had to make some changes that would, in
effect, prime the system for takeover by politically powerful, private water
companies: The government had to end its practice of making wealthy and
industrial customers subsidize the cost of providing water to poor
communities. In addition, water had to be sold at full market rates.
While the people of Ghana suffer, guess
who stands to benefit? None other than San Francisco's own Bechtel Corp.,
which, along with the French companies Vivendi, Saur, and Suez and the U.K.'s
Biwater, is vying to take over Ghana's system at a potentially handsome
profit .
Indeed, the World Bank and the
IMF are granting low-interest loans of a mere $70 million each (the real cost
of Ghana's water infrastructure needs is more like $1.2 billion) to the two
corporations that win the deal to pay for some improvements - in exchange for
claiming the country's market.
" This is
quite vicious and blatant," Rudolf Amenga-Etego, the national campaign
coordinator of Ghana's National Coalition Against the Privatization of Water,
told us in a recent interview. He was in town promoting the fight against
water privatization .
"The World Bank
has among its goals the eradication of poverty," Amenga-Etego said. "But its
policies create poverty by excluding a significant population from water. You
cannot produce a prosperous society that way. They seem to be working for
corporations and not the peoples of the
world."
From Ghana to
Stockton
In 1998, the year after the
Ghana government stopped water subsidies for poor people, the incidence of
guinea worm jumped from 5,473 to 8,965, according to an August 2002 report by
a special fact-finding mission to Ghana, which included representatives from
such organizations as the Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen (a consumer
and good-government group founded by Ralph Nader) and the Center for
Policy Analysis on Trade and Health, a San Francisco-based, nonprofit public
health research and advocacy group, and a host of experts on issues from labor
rights to health care. Taps were turned off, and people couldn't afford to
turn them back on. Rates have shot up 200 percent over the past three years,
and currently 78 percent of Ghana's poor don't have access to piped
water. Thus people are digging wells by hand, which are often contaminated
with sewage and pollution - causing high rates of
disease.
Unfortunately, while the
problems associated with the move toward in Ghana are severe, they aren't
unusual. Privatization pressure is rampant all over the world, including in
the United States. And the privatization efforts that are approved often have
disastrous results. The fact-finding mission reviewed 40 IMF loans from
2000 and found that loans to 12 countries had conditions similar to those in
Ghana.
Even though researchers,
including those at Public Citizen and the nonpartisan, Oakland-based Pacific
Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, have found
that privatization often leads to skyrocketing rates, environmental damage,
poor maintenance, economic inequity, and decreased accountability, the
administration of President George W. Bush backs the IMF and the World Bank's
policies.
In fact, Bush is pushing the
policy domestically by supporting a proposed law that would require any U.S.
community that wants federal money for improving its water system to consider
privatization. And the European Union, where the world's largest private water
corporations are headquartered, is trying to pressure the United States into
opening up its water markets to private companies. (Currently, only 15 percent
of the U.S. population gets its water from private entities). >From New
Orleans to Stockton, officials have been toying with handing over water
systems to private corporations that will reap huge profits at the expense of
customers.
Amenga-Etego, who was honored
by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and has gotten the attention of Rep.
Barbara Lee, is part of global efforts to fight the privatization push. On
Oct. 28, 14 protesters chained themselves together in Bechtel's San
Francisco lobby to raise awareness of the corporation's insistence on suing
the Bolivian government. Bolivia kicked out a Bechtel subsidiary (the
same one that wants to take over in Ghana) after its privatization of the
country's water system resulted in soaring rates and widespread civil
unrest. San Francisco officials, for their part, forced Bechtel out of a
contract to manage the restoration of the regional drinking-water system last
spring.
Officials in Lee County, Fla.,
decided two years ago to regain control of the water and sewer systems
after an audit found that private contractors had failed to properly
maintain the system. In Pekin, Ill., after private operators spiked
rates by more than 200 percent over an 18 year period, city officials started
talks to reclaim public control, according to Public Citizen. And in
Atlanta, Ga., reports of problems with city drinking water, such as a
brownish tint and flecks of debris, have made officials decide to audit
the private contractors running the
system.
But Oct. 15 in Stockton, the
city council ignored the pleas of 18,000 residents who signed a petition
asking for the right to vote on any privatization move and decided to start
negotiating with a partnership called OMI-Thames Water to take over its water
and sanitation systems.
Dirty water,
dirty politics OMI-Thames has long raised the ire of environmentalists. Since
1999 the British corporation has been convicted of violating health and
environmental laws 24 times, according to a study by Public Citizen.
OMI-Thames has been purchased by the German-based RWE
Aktiengesellschaft, which is also acquiring American Water Works, the
largest private water company in the United States, with business in 29
states, including California. The move into Stockton is part of a trend toward
consolidation in the industry and privatization in the
country.
"The giant water corporations
see the United States' public water utilities as their next market and
are trying to get their foot in the door to control profits and potentially
the public's supplies in the future," said Juliette Beck, an organizer
with Public Citizen. "It's alarming because these companies have a track
record of raising rates, laying off experienced employees, and slashing their
[investment] costs in the systems - not to mention environmental
accidents."
Some public officials are
getting the message. Unlike their Stockton counterparts, officials in New
Orleans heeded public concern and Oct. 16 turned down what would have been the
largest privatization deal of a water system in the United States. And
Santa Cruz county officials are asking the California Public Utilities
Commission to deny a request to raise rates in Felton by 57 percent so
RWE can pay off the cost of purchasing American Water Works. Other California
communities that have been served by the California division of American
Water, such as the city of Thousand Oaks, are protesting the
merger.
"Communities are usually shocked
when they find out that their local utility has been bought by some
multinational corporation," Beck said. " It's a classic problem of
globalization. But people are taking steps to do everything possible to
reclaim public control and accountability for their most precious
resource - water."
E-mail Savannah
Blackwell at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Public
Citizen California Office 1615 Broadway, Ninth Floor Oakland, California
94612
510.663.0888
www.citizen.org/california _______________________
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