BERLIN (AFP) — Corruption is denying the poor in Africa and Asia access to water and making households in Nairobi face higher utility bills than those in New York, a report by Transparency International released Wednesday said.
The anti-graft watchdog said corruption is a critical but often overlooked factor in the global water crisis that has left a fifth of the world's population without guaranteed access to drinking water.
The chairwoman of Transparency International, Huguette Labelle, warned that governments ignore water corruption at their own peril as it leads to waste and risks undermining their efforts to fight growing food shortages.
"Water shortage means food shortage and if the corruption in irrigation is not also addressed, these efforts will fall short," she said.
The group's first report focusing on water said corruption made the resource more expensive and scarce and pushed up pollution levels.
"The costs of corruption in the water sector are disproportionately borne by the poor. In developing countries, corruption is estimated to raise the price for connecting a household to a water network by as much as 30 percent.
"One result is that poor households in Jakarta, Lima, Nairobi or Manila spend more on water than residents of New York City, London or Rome."
The report warned that graft has seen communities denied access to water as officials penalise people because of their political affiliation or focus on provision to rich areas where they receive bigger bribes.
In Malawi, it said, studies showed that more than half of the new water collection points constructed between 1998 and 2002 were in areas that already had satisfactory access to drinking water.
"In some communities, the disparity was linked to the political affiliations determining the construction and location of water points," it said.
A lack of access to water in sub-Saharan Africa keeps people from work or school as they spend hours walking to the nearest water collecting points or sees communities fall prey to informal providers who operate in "a legal grey zone".
"In Nairobi, the poor without access to the city's water network pay five to 10 times more for water than their wealthy counterparts."
The same problems arose in Bangladesh where "water mafias" collude with corrupt officials to block extension of the water network or sabotage it in order to preserve their lucrative monopoly in giving people access to potable water, the report found.
Transparency International said in Asia big irrigation and dam projects in densely populated countries like China and India were plagued by corruption and safety concerns were cast to the wind by unscrupulous officials.
It pointed out that officials stole 50 million dollars (32 million dollars) from the Three Gorges Dam resettlement project and said in India corruption swallows some 25 percent of the money spent on irrigation projects.
In India, officials were estimated to gain 10 times their salaries in bribes and in Pakistan up to eight times. In China, it said petty corruption at a local level has led to "a situation in which 700 million people drink water contaminated with animal and human waste."
The report warned that corruption was likely to increase as climate change and population growth lead to greater water shortages.
"The less water there is available, the higher the corruption risks that emerge in control over the water supply."
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