The Basic Right to Water Denied

A 12-year civil war and a series of natural disasters have left El Salvador the fourth poorest nation in an impoverished Central America, with 50 percent of the Salvadoran population living in poverty. 90 percent of the country‚ natural water is contaminated, and half the population drinks untreated water. The people of El Salvador struggle to attend to the most basic necessities while the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank continue pushing the disastrous recipes of privatization.

By the end of 1999, El Salvador had an external debt of $2.8 billion. Debt service amounted to 2.5 percent of GDP in 1998 and is considered moderate. The combined level of under and unemployment exceeds 50 percent. The devastating state of the Salvadoran economy renders El Salvador exceptionally vulnerable to the demands of privatization attached to loans from multilateral institutions. In 1996, the World Bank approved a $24 million loan conditioned upon the privatization of El Salvador‚ public sector infrastructure, including water. It was followed by a second structural adjustment loan of $52.5 billion, a sum the desperate Salvadoran government could hardly resist.

In January 2000, the state water company raised water rates by 300 percent for those who used the least water, penalizing individual customers while offering a rebate for businesses. Critics see that the rate hike was intended to smooth the way for public acceptance of the water company‚ eventual privatization. However, in a country where an average worker needs three times the prevailing minimum wage to support a family, many are now forced to choose between safe drinking water, basic food needs, health care and their children‚ education.

Water service, especially in the poor neighborhoods and the outskirts of the city, is extremely irregular and often the taps run only at night or every couple of days. Those who can afford $15-20 a month can buy drinking water from private companies that sell five gallon containers door-to-door out of large blue trucks. The cost is about 6 times the monthly bill for tap water and out of reach for most Salvadorans. About 70 percent of people with a job earn the minimum wage of $158 per month.

Workers from the water worker‚ trade union (SETA) say that President Tony Saca is pushing a privatization proposal to comply with requirements couched in a 1998 loan from the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). The IDB loan was revised to rebuild water systems destroyed by a devastating 2001 earthquake. However, the revision also provided money to “decentralize” ANDA, set up smaller municipal water companies and open them to public-private concessions. The government has yet not passed ANDA reform legislation, but 19 municipalities, representing 18,000 household water connections, are voluntarily experimenting with a variety of concession formats. The IDB has been pushing water privatization in El Salvador since the 1998 loan was approved. This has included the introduction of a new water law which attempts to promote concessions in 152 of the 262 municipalities throughout the country. However, resistance from trade unions, consumer groups, environmentalists, and the opposition FMLN political party have stalled wholesale implementation of the new water law.