residents of a Malaysian island facing problems accessing water

The Malaysian island of Langkawi is experiencing difficulty accessing water due to drought and aging infrastructure. Residents struggle every day to try to live properly despite everything.

Southeast Asia has been experiencing an intense heat wave in recent weeks. In Malaysia, the month of March had already been particularly hot and scorching. The northern region of the country, as a whole, is affected by El Niño, a meteorological phenomenon synonymous with a long dry season.

Langkawi, an island in the north of Malaysia and inhabited by fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, is particularly concerned. This destination, which Franceinfo visited, is popular with tourists but has problems with access to water. The cause: months without rain, but also aging infrastructure. Some residents are organizing themselves as best they can to deal with these problems.

Store water to deal with outages

In her garden, and under sweltering temperatures in the middle of the day, Norhasmiza, a resident of Langkawi, turns on her tap. “The water supply is already cut off, there is no more, and when you don’t have a water tank at home, that’s all you have. Sometimes it’s even slower for the Speed.” This resident, at the head of a large family, is organizing herself to cope with the regular absence of running water. “Every day, laundry costs me 10 ringgit. Mineral water, per day, I would say it costs me around 15 ringgit. Do you want to see my bill too? Because I also have to pay my water bill.”

For only a few weeks, this resident now has a cistern in her garden, with the aim of storing water in the event of a power outage. The equipment was given to him by a charity.

“For me it’s very expensive. You know, here people work for a monthly salary of 1,500 ringgit, sometimes the equipment costs 300 euros. So how can they afford that?”

Norhasmiza, a resident of Langkawi

at franceinfo

Water supply problems affect different places in Langkawi. This other resident sometimes has to pay 5 ringgit per day to shower in a hotel. “Since last year, if my house has no water for two or three days, I have to take a bucket, soap and a towel, and I go to the water company to wash. There hasn’t been any rain here for nine months and the pipes are leaking. So we have to figure out how to resolve this problem.”

Problem amplified by El Niño

For his part, Malaysian researcher Mohamad Faiz, a specialist in the consequences of global warming on water, is analyzing the evolution of the situation over several months in the country and on the island of Langkawi. “The problem of insufficient access to water in Malaysia is amplified both by natural phenomena such as El Niño, which alter rainfall patterns, and by significant infrastructure challenges. , it is the high level of non-revenue water [non-revenue water – NRW]water loss on average amounts to between 35% and 37%”, he describes. And according to this Malaysian specialist, time is running out as these problems will become more and more frequent in the future.