With the ageing water infrastructure, the outage we had earlier this week didn’t come as a surprise. I have to applaud the authorities, though, for working around the clock for days to get the water supplies up and running again. As a matter of fact, the recurring yellow issue, which has been plaguing residents in some parts of the country, is currently being addressed with all the upgrade works at water treatment plants. It goes to show that the authorities have been prioritising the needs and well-being of the people.
However, in terms of public communication, the authorities still have a ways to go. Where I live in Kampong Jangsak, we first experienced water disruptions at 3am on Monday morning. Since there was no official notice, I figured there must be another reason for the water outage. Then seven hours later, the authorities announced that they were experiencing problem with the booster pump, and that quite a large area of Brunei-Muara District would be affected. Why did it take so long for them to release the statement?
There are pockets of the country that experience frequent water disruptions, and I live in one of those areas. Like a lot of the residents, we have had a water tank installed in our backyard to tide us over in the case of a water outage. But the fact that it took the authorities so many hours to finally let the public in on the extent of the problem meant we went on with our daily lives, unaware of the magnitude of the issue. By the time we learnt of the situation, it was too late to conserve our reservoirs.
There ought to be contingency plans in place across all public services. If the recent heatwaves had taught us one thing, it would be that a crisis can pop up seemingly out of nowhere. We are not talking about just Plan B but Plans C, D, E, F and G. And we have been aware of our ageing water infrastructure for some time now. So it is high time to consider spending a large chunk of the allocated budget into upgrading all the facilities – in phases.
Water, like electricity and more recently, the Internet, is a necessity in the modern world. Without it, the scale of disruption on our daily lives would be immense.
It is a national imperative that we realise Brunei Vision 2035, which is not that long from now. It would be a source of pride for me as a citizen if we could reach these goals. While we work towards these finish lines together, armed with patriotism and pure determination, we ought to be mindful that the scarcity of “the little things”, such as electricity and water, could be the collective straw that broke the camel’s back.
A Patriot
