SHAH ALAM, 20 Apr: The person that must assume full responsibility regarding the issue of water outage in several states, including Selangor, is the Minister of Energy, Green Technology and Water, Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili.

The former Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, said that as a federal minister, Dr Ongkili should have a plan to inform the people across the country about the water management in each state.

Zaid said, in example, that each state has its own water rationing programme to address the lack of the resource, but what did the Federal Government do in states with chronic water problems such as Selangor, Kelantan and Malacca.

“Did he not feel obliged to inform the people that the government or the ministry has a systematic way to ensure that water shortage does not happen, as faced by several states.

“Or if the government did not have any alternative to overcome it, at least he should have a plan to standardise water tariffs to be more fair and not burden the people,” he said, quoted from the Malaysia Gazette portal

Zaid said that in the situation where the people currently face the problem of water outage which is prolonged, like experienced in Selangor, which needed to conduct rationing that has lasted almost three month, they expect something good from the Federal Government.

Of course, he said, among the ministers that the people depend on is Dr Ongkili, because he is in charge of the ministry related to energy and water, as he can assure by showing long-term and short-term plans to address this critical issue.

“At least Dr Ongkili or his deputy should appear on television once in a while to explain what the Federal Government, the department and agencies under the ministry is doing to overcome the lack and outage of water,” he said.