Treated water reserves in the state stand at 11 per cent, a special water monitoring committee led by state secretary Datuk Khusrin Munawi claims.
He insisted that besides Cheras, which is supplied by the Sungai Langat treatment plant, there were no water disruptions in the state.
“There is no water shortage as pictured by some media,” he told reporters after the state executive council meeting yesterday.
Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, who was at the same press conference, said the water reserve rate of 2 per cent, as claimed by water concessionaire Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas), was inaccurate.
“The production capacity reserve is 11per cent and will increase to 18 per cent after March next year once the mitigation project is completed,” he claimed.
Asked about the difference in statistics, Khalid said the special committee looked at the capacity of treatment plants while Syabas referred to its distributive system capacity.
He said the mitigation project would improve both the capacity of treatment plants as well as distributive system.
“The production capacity of the 34 treatment plants at present is 4,807 million litres a day (MLD), compared to Syabas’ distributive capacity of 4,371 MLD.
“There is an excess of 436 MLD and it means that Syabas is operating below its actual capacity,” he said.
Khalid added that once the mitigation project was completed, the production capacity would rise to 5,139 MLD, which is 768 MLD more than Syabas’ distributive capacity.
He said the findings by the special committee strengthened the state government’s plan to take over the operations of Syabas, as the water concessionaire had failed to provide satisfactory service to the people.
Khalid said the Federal Government had not totally rejected the state’s plan on Syabas, but had merely referred it to the Attorney-General for advice.
“In the meantime, we have moved forward by preparing the necessary documents,” he said.
On the Federal Government’s intention to issue tenders for the Langat 2 water treatment plant next month without the state government’s consent, Khalid said he would not interfere with the tender process.
“The authority to approve any application relating to the implementation of Langat 2 must be directed to the state government,” he said.
