Privatization doesn't hold Water
Jeff Carolin, The McGill Daily

The World Bank in Ghana: up close and personal

MONTREAL (CUP) - In the last few years, it's become possible to mark time both by international summits, be they the G-8, FTAA, WTO, or a multitude of others and the anti-globalisation protests that have sprung up around the barbed wire fences. Still, many people living in the West have chosen to keep their distance, maybe because it's tough for them to discern a clear cause of the anger that can turn today's calm city streets into tomorrow's battlegrounds.

This is why I want to share an experience that I had with another Canadian, Sarah Malan, while on a study abroad program in Ghana, West Africa. The journey sharpened my perspective of the reality behind the rhetoric: the fighting that takes place between the summits.

Sarah Malan and I spent January to April of this year as interns for the National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water (NCAP), a civil-society movement formed in 2001 to oppose the joint World Bank-Ghanaian government plan to privatise urban water supplies by leasing the public utility to two foreign corporations.

What follows is not meant to be a self-congratulatory tale of my journeys in an exotic locale. Rather, my intent is for people to learn how organisations like the World Bank operate.

Two weeks into our placement with NCAP, Patrick Apoya, the coalition member with whom we were working, burst into the conference room to tell us that the Water Sector Restructuring Secretariat (WSRS) - the government body that was facilitating the privatisation process in Ghana and is funded by the World Bank - had come to town that very day to hold a public forum about the privatisation plan. Apoya, dismayed that he couldn't make it himself, told Sarah, myself, and another member of the NGO to go on behalf of NCAP.

After registering our attendance, we tried to find out why no one from NCAP, or from the broader NGO community, had been told about this meeting. The registration clerk told us that the man charged with sending letters out to local stakeholders was semi-literate - a strange choice for a communications position. Even stranger was that despite these apparent communications difficulties, government representatives from all over the region, and the local and national media all knew about the meeting.

Despite our lack of preparation and numbers, we (naively) hoped that, in the time allotted for open debate, we would be able to force the WSRS representatives to address the concerns of NCAP - namely, that the current plan to privatise would prevent low-income communities from receiving clean drinking water, which in turn would lead to increased illness and mortality.

Civil Education or Propaganda?

As the proceedings got underway, we began to doubt the extent to which this would be an educative and democratic public forum addressing all perspectives of the privatisation issue. We were alarmed when the first two hours were devoted to a pair of fancy PowerPoint presentations delivered by WSRS members highly trained in the art of public relations. Even more alarming, they preached only in English about the benefits of "private-sector participation" - the euphemism used for the privatisation scheme - when only well-educated Ghanaians speak English.

At the conclusion of these speeches, the so-called open debate began. Our chance at last. The chairperson explained the simple format: anyone in the audience with a comment could raise his or her hand and, once chosen by the chairperson, could come to the front and speak.

Unfortunately, in addition to being simple, this format was also unfair, undemocratic, and far from an open debate, mainly because the WSRS always had the last word after anyone spoke.

This structural bias was used to full effect when, after I spoke, the PR experts used a devastating array of rhetorical flourishes, distorted facts, outright lies, and personal attacks about me being a foreigner. The main speaker even walked down the aisle to where I was sitting, like a game-show host, and launched into a comedic tirade about how little I, as a white Canadian, actually knew about this issue. The paradox of my position as a white foreigner was revealed: on the one hand, as a visible representative of the West, my thoughts could carry great weight. On the other hand, when my status as an outsider was turned against me, my mountain of credibility was transformed into a yawning pit. I wasn't allowed to defend myself or my position. I had to be restrained by another member of my NGO.

Notwithstanding our minimal opposition, the faces of the two WSRS speakers were split by smug smiles as the government representatives in the audience congratulated them. The coverage they would receive from the national television station contributed to their smarmy ecstasy - the programming would clearly demonstrate that privatisation was the way to go.

This conclusion to the day's events left me seething, as even at that early point in my placement, I had no doubts that many Ghanaians would suffer the ill effects of unsafe drinking water if privatisation is carried out.

This is Reality

As I slowly uncurled my fists, a part of me was saying that this was a great learning experience. I had gained some valuable practical experience for my degree in international development studies. At the end of the day, I wasn't staying in Ghana, I was returning to Canada. In Canada, I could have safe drinking water almost anywhere and anytime I wanted.

Another part of me recognised that meetings like this one - meetings where it is just so clear where the money and power lie - are happening all the time, everywhere in the world, and often on a larger scale. This is why activists encircle international summits carrying angry placards: so that no one can ever walk away from a meeting that concerns the livelihoods of hundreds, or thousands, or millions of people thinking that he or she has covered all the angles, as the WSRS speakers were able to do.

If we raise our voices in passion and conviction, they will listen.

Jeff Carolin spent last year in Ghana as a participant of the Rent-In-Ghana Programme.

Refutations

Water was deliberately omitted from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because it was seen as so essential to human existence that, like air, it did not require explicit protection. Rather than being a "right" on its own terms, it serves as a foundation for the explicit human rights of life, health, and an adequate standard of living.

The fundamental importance of affordable, safe drinking water has long been recognised by national governments. Until 20 years ago, every "developed" country and almost every "developing" country relied on the not-for-profit public sector to clean, distribute, and manage their water resources.

In the last 20 years, however, the privatisation of water has become the World Bank's choice method for reforming water utilities. This solution fits neatly into the neo-liberal theory that the private sector is automatically more efficient than the public sector, since the private sector is motivated by the possibility of profit. The World Bank thus ignores the possibility of public sector reform or the formation of public-public or public-community partnerships.

Not only are there outrageous moral implications involved in charging high prices for water in order to satisfy shareholders, but the purported gains of water privatisation - increases in affordability, accessibility, and quality, to name but three - are largely illusory.

Ten Good Reasons to Say No

1. Privatisation leaves the poor with no access to clean water - the only way a private company can make a water utility more economically "efficient" is by charging higher rates. This has the direct result of denying clean water to those who can no longer afford it, and forces them to switch to unsafe water.

2. Privatisation does not improve the fiscal situation of the government - The financing of privatisation agreements, especially in developing countries, often relies on governments to provide the majority of funds. In the plan proposed for Ghana, for example, the government was to incur a World Bank loan of $400 million U.S., while the two private companies were supposed to provide only $30 million each - a sum that the companies refused to pay.

3. Privatisation undermines water quality - The National Association of Water Companies (NAWC), which represents the U.S. private water industry, only agrees to adopt higher water quality standards if a cost-benefit analysis is used. In other words, profit margins are measured against public health.

4. Privatisation replaces one monopoly with another - If the inefficiency of monopolistic competition is used to critique public water utilities, it is contradictory to advocate for the switch to a private monopoly.

5. Companies are accountable to shareholders, not citizens - a government is accountable to its people, while a private company, established by a contract, is accountable only to the bottom line.

6. Privatisation reduces sovereignty and public rights - Private companies don't accept contracts that call for strict regulation. However, even if it were possible to hold a company accountable, there's often no mechanism for a community or country to buy back its water rights - even if the company's performance has been awful.

7. Privatisation is difficult to reverse - Privatisation contracts are written so that it's very tough to prove that they've been breached. What's more, companies can often rely on multinational trade agreements if they feel their contract has been undermined. After Bolivia broke its privatisation contract with Aguas del Tunari, it was sued for $25 million for lost future profits.

8. Privatisation leads to job losses - In order to minimise costs, massive layoffs are often the result of privatisation, such that service and water quality suffer. In Ghana, the privatisation proposal would have laid off half of the national water utility staff, or 2,000 people.

9. Privatisation fosters corruption - The established practice of water privatisation agreements has made both the writing of contracts and the conducting of bidding processes behind closed doors commonplace. Not only is this opacity shocking, since water involves everyone, but it is also fertile ground for bribery.

10. Privatisation opens the door for bulk water exports - It is predicted that water will be our scarcest resource this century. Thus, those who control it will wield immense economic and political power without any accountability. What was democracy invented for again?

With files from the Public Citizen Web site (www.citizen.org)

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