To pay for water

Imagine you are a farmer, or a daily wage laborer. You have a family of six to support. You have two children to be educated, and two old parents getting weaker and more dependent on you every year. You earn $1 after a good day’s work. What do you do with it?

Elsewhere, you would probably worry about your parents falling health, and your child’s neglected future. Then you would shove those worries aside for another day, for the sake of sheer peace of mind, and buy some food for home. You would go home, give it to your spouse, and wash up and be glad of the bite to eat and the mattress to sleep on.

In Honduras, even this basic choice is not simple. Because in Honduras, $1 can get you either a bag of beans, or a barrel of water. In most cases, you would chose the water and forego the food, because water is the single most basic necessity of life, which people like you and I take too much for granted. You can probably make it through the day without a bite to it, but how long can you survive without a drop of water down your throat, that you just can’t afford to buy?

The water distribution system in Honduras was privatized in early 2000, due to pressure from the World Bank on this already indebted country. The gates were opened and scores of private water corporations- mainly from Europe- poured in with proposals. San Pedro Sula, the country’s economic hub, was the first to hand over the distribution part of its waterworks system, DIMA, to a private company.

Water privatization is one of the prime focuses of the Honduran Resistance movement, which has been going on for nearly a decade. But even something as necessary as this has been eclipsed by the coup of 2009, and the resulting violence and protests demanding the return of the ousted president. Manuel Zelaya had many faults, but he was primarily a socialist. He greatly resented the country’s economic helplessness before the global giants, and would talk against the privatization of water and education.

There is a very fundamental wrong in handing over such a basic necessity to the hands of profit- motivated organizations. In the distribution of water, the need for it needs to be the uppermost criterion, and not the people’s ability to pay. For people to survive in a humane manner, water needs to flow from the tap, regardless of where I live or how much I earn.