WHILE the nation works itself into a frenzy over mobile telephones, an increasingly large percentage of the urban population has limited or no access to water.
In common with other city and town dwellers, we’re fed up with the continual excuses for this situation.
The authorities responsible for the water supplies to the capital city have had decades in which to fast-track the construction of new dams in tandem with the power supplier, hydro-electric schemes.
An outgoing Australian commonwealth department of works water engineer warned in his final report in the late 1960s that Port Moresby would need major new dams, piping and treatment plants within 10 years. That was almost 40 years ago, years in which there has been little development of our water resources but a great deal of huffing and puffing between State utility behemoths over the issue.
Port Moresby is famously built in a rain shadow, and normally receives significantly lower rainfall than other parts of the country.
But a forward-looking programme, one that takes into account the galloping growth of this city, should be capable of guaranteeing water for at least the next generation.
Lae experienced a lack of water last Thursday; PNG Power said that a high voltage cross-arm from a power pole at Taraka fell off during a storm on Wednesday cutting the power supply to the Waterboard pumps at East Taraka.
If the cross-arm fell off on Wednesday, why was it not fixed by Thursday?
PNG Power has, as always, a fall-back answer to that question – maintenance work was simultaneously underway at their Ramu station causing load shedding to the supply from Taraka.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred in Lae. Nor is it restricted to our second city.
The present unacceptable water supply situation in Madang has yet to be explained.
In the meanwhile, parts of the town have had only a spasmodic trickle of water or have been completely without supply for nearly a month – and the number of properties and businesses affected has steadily increased.
Waterboard spokesmen blame PNG Power, claiming that the on-going black-outs in Madang make it impossible for them to maintain pressure to consumers, since their pumps are electrically operated and they have no back-up generator.
But The National has been reliably told that this problem was brought up at a chamber of commerce meeting nearly two months ago.
In response, a major industry in the town offered to supply and install a generator to solve the problem.
There has allegedly been no response from the Waterboard.
Matters on the domestic front have reached the point of no return.
Housewives are confronted with mountains of dirty clothes that cannot be washed and plates and cutlery pile up in the town’s sinks awaiting even enough water to provide a superficial rinse.
And far worse, lavatories cannot be flushed, with some families borrowing vehicles to travel to nearby rivers and fill household buckets.
Madang has a series of scenically magnificent lagoons; the price for these is a town built on almost completely flat land with a large number of low-lying swampy areas.
Like Lae, Madang is rapidly growing and is home to a burgeoning population of tertiary students. For them a reliable water supply is a must, if water-borne diseases are not to strike.
Add to these problems the greedy wrangling that takes place with tribal groups. This situation is common in Mt Hagen, with clans demanding either compensation or employment as guardians of pumps and equipment that will otherwise mysteriously develop a myriad of faults.
Mt Hagen has had the taps turned off more frequently than we can remember.
And finger-pointing between the hierarchies has become possibly PNG’s top-ranking sport.
The people – the consumers at the end of the rusty power cables and the outdated pipe systems – simply don’t want to hear any more reasons for non-performance by these two entities.
If PNG leaders wish to keep the water and power utilities under Government control, then surely the public is entitled to expect a reasonable level of service from them.
Instead, they are both expensive and unreliable.
And lack of a clean dependable water supply is a denial of a basic human right.