LookAtVietnam – The Sai Gon Water Supply Corporation (Sawaco) has been asked by HCM City authorities to map out a detailed plan to reduce water losses until 2025.

Workers implement a clean water treatment and leakage prevention system in Can Gio district, HCM City.

The estimated cost for such an effort would be VND5.69 trillion (US$320 million), he said.

Dang Van Khoa, a delegate of the People’s Council, pointed out that a 1,400sq.km area in eastern Manila, the Philippines, with a population of 5.6 million, has similar conditions to HCM City.

Over the last decade, water losses dropped from 54 per cent to 18 per cent in Manila after the Philippines’ Manila Water Co Inc began managing the system.

The Manila company had signed a contract with Sawaco to help reduce water losses in HCM City, Quan said.

Every day, HCM City loses more than 500,000cu.m of clean water of the total 1.3 million cubic metres supplied daily.

The leakage results in a loss of VND3.5 billion ($195,000) a day, said Khoa.

Sawaco said old pipes and wastefulness in construction were the primary causes of water leakage.

Over the past 10 years, water losses have increased from 30 per cent to 42 per cent.

Sawaco aims to reduce leakage to 40.5 per cent by the end of the year via a major project funded by the World Bank that ends in 2012.

The project is being carried out in two densely populated areas, including districts 1, 3, 5 and 10, and in Tan Binh and Tan Phu districts.

The $44 million project is expected to reduce leakage by 2012 to 125,000cu.m per day.

A Finnish company, Soil and Water Consulting, said 90 per cent of the water losses in HCM City were caused by leakage, and the remaining 10 per cent by customer cheating, errors made by water metres, and usage by the firefighting department which has free access to city water supplies.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News