| From Unity, 30 September 2006 |
Water is a right, not a commodityby Mary HortonVisit the Belfast Telegraph web site and there you will find a campaign for clean water. It goes like this: “Drink from a river and get cholera. Drink nothing and dehydrate. Not much of a choice for a child of seven. Help us change 3,000 lives this September.” This campaign advertisement has a photo of a seven-year-old African boy and a photo of Noel Edmonds with a glass of water in his hand. The viewer is asked to click on another site, where I assume they will be asking you to donate money for clean water.I could do with these millionaire celebrities if they spent as much time talking about why this situation exists and if they supported the demand to renationalise water in Britain. Reports recently noted that the British Government was encouraging the privatisation of water in developing countries. It would appear that in some cases there is to be privatisation even before the water has reached the tap. It would do these people well to remember that in the nineteenth century people like Richard Pankhurst and others fought to get clean water into our taps, for health, not for profits, and not with multi-million-pound gimmick advertisements but with courage and conviction—conviction that water is a natural resource for the use and benefit of all human beings. We in this part of the world are now facing an attack on our living standards with the introduction of water charges and the privatisation of the water service. |
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