They are calling for the de-privatisation of water to ensure equitable and sustainable access.
To guarantee equitable and sustainable access, it is necessary to replace the National Water Law (LAN), in force since the Salinas government, with a General Water Law that guarantees this human right to the population, as proposed by President Claudia Sheinbaum, said members of the National Autonomous Citizens’ Comptroller of Water.
Indigenous peoples, researchers, social and environmental organisations from this organisation stressed that the excessive concessioning of water to private companies must be corrected, since in a neoliberal period of 11 years, the number of concessions increased from 2,600 to 360,000 between 1992 and 2003.
On World Water Day, they also demanded an end to water grabbing and the systematic violation of the water rights of indigenous peoples, agrarian nuclei and community water systems.
These problems caused by the LAN affect several states, since the 1992 law that favours the commercialisation of water has not been reformed and violates the Supreme Court ruling that obliges the legislature to work on the issue, said Oscar Arredondo, of the Red Agua para Todos (Water for All) collective.
The LAN, he added, is not capable of responding to the current crisis in the country, nor to the drought affecting the national territory, and on the contrary has largely benefited the extractive industries.
Members of the Comptroller General’s Office acknowledged the identification of 7,000 irregular concessions announced by Efraín Morales, director of the National Water Commission, as well as the restoration of the Lerma-Santiago rivers. However, they expressed concern at the fact that they were being cleaned up by means of treatment plants and collectors, without eliminating the sources of pollution or involving local communities in the regeneration of their watersheds.
Arredondo pointed out that the failure of the Congress of the Union to legislate in favour of water has led to persistent problems, such as in the capital of Puebla and five other municipalities in the metropolitan area, which have suffered systematic water cuts due to the late payment of the service by the company Concesiones Integrales, as well as abuses in the form of overcharging and pollution of the water and the Atoyac and Alseseca rivers, since the company charges 500,000 users 30 per cent of the tariff for sanitation.
