Report on
Global Water Operators’ Partnership Alliance Foundation Meeting
Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya, January 29-20, 2009

A key recommendation of the “Hashimoto Action Plan” announced by the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB) was the establishment of a global mechanism to promote Water Operators Partnerships.  The Hashimoto Action Plan includes the following principles for water operator partnerships.More

PSI APRO & FES Joint workshop Raising the profile of Public Sector Institutional Performance in the delivery of Quality Public Services 10-12 December 2008, Mumbai, India

The workshop is part of a 3 year joint PSI-FES project to support the Quality Public Services Campaign with evaluation and research to ensure that the Asia Pacific regional action plan are relevant and useful and meeting the objectives of the campaign.

K. Sato, PSI Asia Pacific Regional secretary welcomed the participants and mentioned about the difficult circumstances and challenges we are living in. He remembered the crisis in the year 1929 and the subsequent world war. Presently there is plenty of troubles for public sector and people are losing jobs which is driving people crazy. We are living in perennial fear of lack of financial security leading to cultural devastation and economic perils. This is time for us to be together and cool headedly to think the alternatives and not to indulge in retrospection or complain about the weaknesses. There need to be a forward looking strategy to tackle the problems. More

WATER: COMMON GOOD, PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, AND ALTERNATIVES
Securing the Right to Water—Challenges and Solutions in Asia

From the 23rd to the 27th of September 2008, water justice activists, public water managers/operators, trade unions and academe from Asian countries met in Chennai, India. The delegates from 17 Asian countries, and representatives from networks in Europe and the Americas participated in the gathering called “WATER: COMMON GOOD, PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, AND ALTERNATIVES, Securing the Right to Water — Challenges and Solutions in Asia”. More

Report on Water: Common Good, Public Management, and Alternatives
Securing the Right to Water-Challenges and Solutions in Asia
September 23-27, 2008
Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India

Asia shows the highest number of people unserved by either water supply or sanitation. 715 million people or 65 percent have no access to safe drinking and potable water, while 1.9 billion or 80 percent of the population in Asia has no access to sanitation.  However, according to UN Water, there is enough water for everyone. The problem is largely one of ‘governance’, i.e. equitably sharing the world’s freshwater while ensuring the sustainability of natural ecosystems and its resources. This balance, unfortunately, has yet to be achieved. More

Activities in the World Water Week 2008 in Stockholm August 17 – 23, 2008

Seminar Session: Regional Water Operators Partnership Initiatives: Constraints, Challenges and Way Forward

Report on PSI-NCC Philippines affiliates Meeting
22 July 2008 @ Kimberly Hotel, Manila

The NCC meeting has been attended by all affiliate organizations, such as, AFW, AGWWAS, CIU, MWEU, MWSA, NECU, PGEA and PSLINK. Ms. Katherine Loh, PSI-APRO Sub-Regional Secretary was also at the meeting.  Topics and issues discussed were as follows: More

ADB Meeting and Quality Public Services Workshop
Manila, Philippines, 10-14 December 2007

An orientation on ADB was conducted by Bobet Corral, then followed by an overview of Past PSI-ADB. More...

PSI-FES Strategic Planning Workshop
December 6-9, 2006, Pattaya, Thailand

The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the Public Services International South East Asian Sub-Regional Office (PSI-SEASRO) have jointly organizing a workshop for the South East Asia affiliates on Strategic Planning.  This is a priority issue of PSI in developing union capacity and solidarity and is also part of the PSI Asia Pacific Regional Objectives.  In like manner, the FES is the sponsoring organization for the participants travel expenses, hotel accommodation including meals. More...

Water Challenges for people-centered model: The case of AGWWAS and its role in the campaign against privatization
National President, Alliance of Government Workers in the Water Sector (AGWWAS-Philippines)Presented during the 1st Asia Pacific Water Summit, at Beppu, Oita Prefecture, Japan, December 1-5, 2007

In the Philippines, Privatization of basic services as State Policy.  In 1986, Presidential Decree (PD) No. 2029 & 2030 had introduced privatization as a policy in the country under the dictate of the IMF-WB.  In 1987, it was the start of implementation of privatization policy under Pres. Corazon Aquino’s administration.  It gave new owners of the sold state enterprises, assets & institutions a free hand to fire and to hire their personnel and prohibit any injunction that may be served. The Build-Operate Transfer (BOT) Law has been enacted to allow private sector participation in infrastructure projects. The government rehabilitates and assumes debts of government enterprises before their privatization and widened its scope to include infrastructure, energy, water & irrigation projects.  In 1995, Congress passed a law, Republic Act No. 8041, otherwise known as the National Water Crisis Act of 1995, the privatization of Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS). More

Labor-Management Cooperation:  A PUP in Benchmarking Water Utilities
VIOLETA PEREZ-CORRAL
Public Services International Research Unit-Asia www.psiru.org, November 2007

Water is a human right, and access to safe, sufficient and affordable water is essential to equitable development. Across the globe, there is growing public resistance to ‘public-private partnerships’ promoted by international financial institutions (IFIs) that result in commodification and for-profit operation of water services. It has also become increasingly clear that neither private operators nor private capital will bring us any closer to the United Nation’s MDG targets in water supply and sanitation (WSS). Countries must assume their responsibilities in providing water services, and all relevant stakeholders need to work more closely together in ‘public-public partnerships’ (PUPs). More

Philippine Water Dialogues Planning Workshop
Nov. 7 & 8, 2007 – Cloud 9 Sports and Leisure Club, Antipolo City

The Philippine Water Dialogues set out to explore what works best in the delivery of water and sanitation, and what will allow the Philippines to meet its Millennium Development goal (MGD) targets.  What lessons can be learned from past experience?  How can these lessons feed into the national and international controversy about the role of the private sector? More...

Insights on World Social Forum 2007

The 7th edition of world social forum is really a open space reunion reflective thinking, democratic debates of ides, formulations of suggestion, free exchange of experiences and interlinking of effective actions, by trade unions and movements of the civil society, NGO, that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism and are committed to building a world order centered on human person. More...