South Johor folks welcome end of water rationing

Utter relief: A beaming Saroja filling a container with water at her home in Permas Jaya, Johor Baru.

JOHOR BARU: Residents are relieved that their water taps are running normally again after four months of scheduled water supply due to low water levels at two main dams in south Johor.

Housewife G. Saroja, 58, from Permas Jaya, breathed a sigh of relief after learning about the end of the water rationing exercise on Wednesday night.

“It has been a challenging four months as we struggled to maintain sufficient water for the family, especially with my three young grandchildren around. The youngest is three years old and needs clean water for milk every four hours.

“We had to buy huge containers to store water and allocate a special one just for consumption,” she said yesterday.

Saroja said she never had to endure such a long period of water rationing before and hoped that some form of compensation would be given to those affected.

Nurul Azrinajwa Mat Khairi, 22, who lives along Jalan Masjid in Kampung Plentong Baru, said she had difficulty doing her dishes and laundry with the scheduled water supply.

“Sometimes the water supply did not follow the schedule, so we always had to save extra,” said the seamstress.

Yet storing more water was not practical.

“It could cause wastage – the water could not be kept too long as mosquitoes would start to breed,” said Nurul Azrinajwa.

The owner of the Kim Long Fruits Supplier shop, who wanted to be known only as Chok, 48, said he had spent hundreds of ringgit on containers to store water for his goods as well as for home use.

“I spent almost RM500 on four 70-litre containers for my shop and a dozen 15-litre ones for my home above my shoplot.

“I really hope SAJ (Syarikat Air Johor) will compensate us for the inconvenience and our extra expenses,” he said.

Nevertheless, Chok was grateful that SAJ halted the rationing exercise on Wednesday as soon as the water level showed improvement at the Sungai Layang dam.

The four-month-long exercise affected those in Pasir Gudang, Masai and parts of Johor Baru.

The Johor Public Works, Rural and Regional Development Commit­tee chairman Datuk Hasni Moham­mad had said that domestic water consumers affected by the exercise would enjoy special incentives to be decided by the state authorities.