Water distribution problem in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

How to solve the water supply problems in Phnom Penh? The city is strongly growing and 70% of the population has access to tap water. The case study presented a problem of water supply in the city and the class was divided into 5 groups each presenting different stakeholders: NGO, Phnom Penh water supply authority (PPWSA), village 1 in the center, village 2 and a garment factory in a densely populated area. This time each group was thinking its interests and how they could solve the situation in their point of view. Each member of the group also had a different role and this also created fictional tension between group members. I was a vice president of the garment factory, and other members of the factory were a CEO, a marketing director and a worker. The factory was located in a densely populated area and the industry was using ground water together with a village 2. However the ground water source was decreasing rapidly because of the heavy use. Our interest was of course to have a good access to water which we need in our production. We are one important employee in the area and all our products are exported.

What solutions we have? We can relocate the factory near the river so the process could use water from it, but it’s expensive and we don’t own any land areas there. We can build access to the water-distribution network and start to pay for that. We can make our process much more efficient or deliver water we need in tanks from somewhere else. Or we can make co-operation with other industry to solve the water distribution problem. Would any of these solutions be possible in the real world, I don’t know. Other groups did not seem to have any breakthroughs either. Many projects are going on and PPWSA has made progress. However the rich families those who have been in the power for a long time refuse to pay anything for the water and in slums water are taken illegally from water-distribution network and sold further with higher price. If all the people using the water in some way would pay I guess it would help to expand water-distribution network and the costs would not be even that high.