Water scared land

LAST week, Singapore crossed another milestone by launching S$1.05 billion facility on Tuaspring Desalination Plant. The new facility will produce 70 million gallons daily to add Singapore's daily water needs of 400 million gallons. Together with old desalination plant, total desalinated water will meet 25% of water needs in the town. I salute to Singapore's leaders to learn their continuous effort on securing their public on water. There is enough reason why they keep spending huge budget on water research. There are four national taps in Singapore to rely on, desalinated water or treated seawater, NEWater, water from the reservoirs and imported water from Malaysia. The latest one is the reason why they are very much concern with water supply. Whatever they irk Malaysia's authority in past history, their neighbor would threat to stop supplying water to city state. What a pity state to feel so? They have ambitious plan to reach 80% of their water needs from NEWater and desalinated water in 2060 because Singapore's existing bilateral agreement to import water from Johor will expire on 2061.

I can't stay away from praising them by studying the trend above. What a great leadership to find out solution which is almost impossible had it been our country's problem. I am reading a book called 'Everything is broken' which is uncovering the true untold story of Cylone Nargis disaster in Burma. There is a map in front page of the book to show the affected Irrawaddy region by Cyclone. I am very happy to learn there are so many drinkable rivers across the country. They are flowing from the northern highland toward down south and finally join with the sea. However, the sad fact is that our people in rural area are facing severe shortage of water in their daily life. In fact, our commercial city Yangon residents even cannot receive pipe running water from its municipal management. Most of housing have to rely on their own tube water by storing in the underground tank. Then there is no wonder to see our rural people thirsty of fresh water. This show how our leaders have failed to do their jobs to ease our people's plight. They would say we are not right to compare with wealthy city state. But the history itself said Singapore got independence on 1965 and that time Myanmar is well placed ahead of them. The famous speech of Singapore's founder leader LKY suggest that it is right. We have a lot sweet rivers but our countrymen cannot access clean water. Singapore has no river but its people enjoy tap water at their disposal. Get back to track, we have to change our leadership in coming 2015GE if we are determined to develop our nation and get back international reputation through the guidance of capable leader.