Chiapas: Citizens of Tuxtla Gutierrez Worried about Drinking Water

Forum “Principles Related to Freedom of Expression and the Right to Water” in Tuxtla Gutierrez. Archive photo @ChiapasParalelo

On December 6, the Promoting Committee of the Citizen Observatory “Aguas SMAPA con el Agua”, for the Defense of Life, Land and Territory issued a statement warning of the privatization of water in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas.

The Committee is composed of a group of citizens, academics and members of civil and social organizations. It seeks to establish by 2017 a citizen observatory of the Drinking Water and Sewerage System of Tuxtla Gutierrez (SMAPA) in order to “monitor and check the functioning of the municipal unit, in addition to compliance with the human right to drinking water.” It pointed out that in Tuxtla about 60 colonies of the 500 that comprise it do not have the universal service of drinking water, which violates human rights.”

In a statement, the members of the Promoter Committee denounced: “We know of SMAPA’s financial crisis, generated by robbery, pillage, corruption and diversion of resources, which are intended to justify a poor service and its privatization; this, like an ant advances under the modern mercantile strategy called “outsourcing” that is nothing more than “subcontracting a service”, this is to transfer the resources and responsibilities of certain tasks to a third party, as an example we have the concession of The installation and management of the meters to the company CISSA”.

 They warned that: “The water service is bad because it is a strategy of the authorities to bother us and make us believe that privatization is necessary, but it would be the same as with Proactiva [for the management of waste] and would fail.” Due to this, they expressed their “total rejection of any form of water privatization and operator systems”.

 For more information in Spanish:

“SMAPA ya privatizó los medidores de agua de Tuxtla”: Ciudadanos (Chiapas Paralelo, a 6 de diciembre de 2016)

Contra la privatización del agua crean un observatorio ciudadano del agua en Tuxtla (Espoir Chiapas, a 6 de diciembre de 2016)

 For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas : Sigue el movimiento en contra de la privatización del agua en Tuxtla