Over the years I have been to enough conferences to know
that when an important government minister takes to the podium the audience is
in for a fairly dull 20 minutes. No one is going to learn very much, although
everyone will be respectful and clap at the end as the minister scuttles from
the room with the feeble excuse of having another pressing engagement (while
everyone actually knows their hasty departure is to avoid answering difficult
questions). Somewhat depressingly, it is a universal truth that the more senior
the minister, the less informed they will be, and the faster they will
scuttle.
As I sat at the PUB Spotlight event in Singapore earlier
today and heard the chairman announce grandly that ‘His Excellency Ek Soon
Chan, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Energy in Cambodia’ was going
to speak my little heart sank. I reached for my iPad with every intention of
spending the session quietly clearing my email backlog.
Within seconds it was clear that this was not going to be a
typical ministerial pontification. This session was going to be uniquely
informative and entertaining. His topic was how they have managed to steadily
reduce leakage in Phnom Penh from 76% in 1993 to less than 10% in 2017. To be
brutally honest, the activities they undertook to achieve this result
were not rocket science, or indeed any different from those that would be
adopted in any major city anywhere in the world (namely: identify the key
‘burst risk’ locations, repair and replace aging pipes, install meters,
establish robust maintenance schedules). What stood out was the passion and
personal experience with which the Minister spoke.
I think my favourite anecdote was how, while rolling out a
metering programme, one of the local residents who didn’t like proposed meter
installation plan, put a gun to the Ministers head and threatened to pull the
trigger. In a ballsy response the Minister simply arranged for the water to the
whole street to be turned off. His reasoning was simple: You want water, you
pay for it.
His talk was followed by Mr Kawagoe from the Bureau of
Waterworks in Tokyo. They serve 13 million people and, if I understood the
interpreter correctly, they have enough water mains to go around the
circumference of the earth, twice. Despite this enormous asset base, Tokyo has
been able to reduced leakage from 80% in 1945 (wars have a tendency to mess
with pipe integrity) to just 2% in 2012. Rather humbly they stated that
this was ‘probably’ world class. Probably.
Mr Kawagoe went on to say, with just a little bit of shame,
that last year the leakage level had crept up to 3.2%. Ignoring the fact that a
1.2% shift must surely be within the margins of error I can think of numerous
water utilities who would give their right arm to have leakage levels 5 times
this. Leaving arguments aside as to whether this level of leakage control is financially
astute (the cost of maintaining it will surely far exceed the cost of allowing
some leaks to persist, especially in a city like Tokyo where any street works
will be disruptive), this is a staggering achievement. I waited with baited
breath to hear how this had been achieved. Mr Kawagoe talked about they utilize
some clever widgets to find leaks, and an intensive training programme so their
staff know what to do. As with the Cambodian Secretary of State, nothing he
said was rocket science. There was one thing however that might just explain
their stellar performance: Since Tokyo is in an earthquake zone they install
thicker pipes than usual, and they have special earthquake resistant ‘flexi’
joints that move when the earth tremors (how cool is that?). Perhaps that’s the
secret. We just need to build better pipes. Who would have thought.
I am also pleased to report that neither speaker scuttled.
Indeed, my new Cambodian Ministerial hero stayed for the whole day and
participated fully in all the debates and group discussions. A politician who
knows what they are talking about and shows respect to his audience. Whatever
next? It will never catch on.
