Singapore says it helped Johor make up for water shortage

Singapore says it supplied more treated water to Johor ‘out of goodwill’. (Facebook pic)

PETALING JAYA: Singapore said it recently supplied additional treated water to Malaysia to make up for the shortfall in production following pollution which affected Johor’s water plants.

The Straits Times quoted Singapore’s Public Utilities Board (PUB) which is in charge of the republic’s water supply as saying that six million gallons per day (mgd) of treated water was supplied between Jan 2 and 4. (1 mgd = 3.785.4 cubic metres per day).

PUB said Singapore usually supplied 16 mgd of treated water to Johor.

“At Johor’s request, PUB helped to tide Johor residents over the water supply disruption by turning on PUB’s Pasir Gudang offtake and supplying an additional 6 million of gallons per day (mgd) of treated water between Jan 2 and Jan 4, 2019,” ST quoted a PUB spokesman.

PUB said it had supplied more treated water to Johor out of “goodwill”, adding that it was done “without prejudice to our rights under the 1962 Water Agreement”.

Under an agreement between Singapore and Malaysia in 1962, Singapore would get 250 million gmd of raw water from Johor.

In return, Johor was entitled to a daily supply of treated water from Singapore up to 2% of the raw water it supplied.

Singapore pays 3.0 sen per thousand gallons of raw water, and sells treated water back to Johor at 50 sen per thousand gallons. -FMT