Malaysia needs to spread its water supply between states to avert a potential crisis, according to a report from the Star quoting National Water Services Commission chairman, Charles Santiago.
The government agency raised the water-sharing issue after the states of Penang and Kedah saw taps running dry this past weekend due to an unannounced outage caused by a dam failure. The incident sparked a panic-buying spree of drinking water among residents as businesses lost millions of ringgit during the downtime.
Water levels along the Sungai Muda, the main raw water resource for the two states, dropped from the normal level of 3 meters to 50 centimeters after a barrage experienced a sensor failure and drained the river out to the sea, according to the report.
While Penang’s neighboring state of Perak currently has surpluses in supply, raw water resources in Malaysia belong to individual states and are not under federal jurisdiction, causing difficulty in any coordinated action between the two.
Santiago said a greater degree of “interstate water resource distribution in times of crisis” is a must for the well-being of Malaysia as a whole. This comes as many countries in Southeast Asia grapple with record temperatures and cases of heatstroke amid extreme weather.
