The socialist-led government is to unpick the water industry reforms initiated by the previous administration “by the end of the year.”
The Environment Minister announced to a parliamentary committee that the consolidation and rationalisation of the water industry’s diverse operating structures is against the will of the local councils and assured members that the water industry in Portugal will not be privatised.
Minister João Pedro Matos Fernandes (pictured below) said he is working to “create the conditions for the sustainability of the sector as a whole, ensuring that the Portuguese water in Portugal will not be privatised."
The minister was speaking at the parliamentary committee for Environment, Spatial Planning, Decentralisation, Local Government and Housing, following a Social Democrat request to explain the economic and financial reasons that justified the Government’s reversal of all the reforms to the water sector achieved during the Passos Coelho term of office.
The coalition government wanted to restructure the water industry and then to sell it off.
Some 19 municipal water supply systems were compressed into five operating companies in an attempt to standardise charging and to make the structure coherent and thus saleable.
The present government’s view is to keep water supply local and under council control which will please those councils that use water as a net contributor to their general accounts.
During the debate, the Social Democrats argued that reforms carried out by the previous government allowed the "harmonisation of tariffs" and "promoted cohesion."
The structure of the industry does not need to change at all if privatisation of off the cards and the councils are allowed to continue to bleed customers dry with some charging mark-ups of several hundred percent.
Customer abuse is rife, epitomised by Infralobo’s appalling treatment of its customers, many of who have been cut off for months for refusing to pay an illegal ‘per bedroom’ tax on top of already high water and sewage rates.
The socialists are against water privatisation so the reversal of the work done by the previous government is time well spent.
Whether this monopoly industry ever gets any more efficient or not is of no great concern as the customers simply continue pay over the odds to cover the inefficiencies inherent in an incoherent system.
