While HCM City is trying to reduce its water loss water pipes and tanks have repeatedly been reported broken at many drainage and water supply projects in the city.

While HCM City leads in Vietnam for the water loss ratio – around 40 percent – water pipe breakages have occurred frequently. According to Nguyen Van Hien, director of the Clean Water Transmission Enterprise, a subsidiary of the Saigon Water Company (Sawaco), up to 80 percent of these breakages were caused by contractors.

This enterprise controls over 300 kilometres of pipes. There have been over 50 cases in 2009 in which water pipe breakages were reported at this firm, with over 40 cases caused by construction contractors.

The most recent cases were a 600 millimetre diametre pipe breaking down, causing a large hole in the road; a 250 millimetre pipe breaking on Nguyen Dinh Chieu street, creating four metre deep hole and the loss of hundreds of cubic metres of clean water. Many of the city’s residents were affected by these events.

“We’ve just repaired this pipe, another is reported to be broken. We’ve warned contractors many times and even provided them with a map of the water pipe system but accidents still occur,” complained Vu.

The more incidents occur the more people buying water have to pay, especially when contractors don’t pay compensation to the water supply companies for lost water.

This year losses thanks to breakages have totalled around 1.4 billion Vietnam Dong (VND) but so far they have paid back just 140 million VND. Last year contractors broken pipes worth 650 million dong but they paid only 560 million dong.

Contractors neglected water suppliers’ warnings because once they break water pipes they only have to compensate the water suppliers; they don’t have to pay any fines for negligence.

The Saigon Water Company said that in 2008 and the first five months of 2009, there were up to 461 pipe breaking cases, causing the loss of hundreds of cubic meters of water and affecting the lives of thousands of families.

Thai Phuong