Sabah grapples with chronic water shortages ahead of November election

Limited access to treated water, infrastructure woes plague Malaysia's second-largest state; Anwar pledges to tackle issues

- Lu Wei Hoong Malaysia Correspondent

In Sabah, bottled water is prominently displayed in front of petrol stations and shops. East coast residents also refill containers at vending machines dispensing drinking water.

(ST PHOTOS: LUI WEI HOONG)

Flushing the toilet after answering nature's call is often taken for granted.

But in Semporna, a popular seaside resort town often dubbed the "Maldives of Malaysia", this Straits Times correspondent found himself scrambling for water after being greeted with a dry tap and a "No Water" notice.

Water shortages are a chronic problem plaguing Sabah.

The second-largest state in Malaysia has the lowest access to treated water, at 80.5 per cent of households in 2022.

In neighbouring Sarawak, 83.7 per cent of households are connected to the piped water network, while the figure in Peninsular Malaysia along with the Federal Territory of Labuan stands at 97.1 per cent.

Worse still, a landslide in mid-September caused the collapse of a transmission tower in central Sabah, knocking out the power supply - including that of water treatment plants. This has exposed a deep structural vulnerability in the state's water infrastructure.

Public anger over the crisis forced Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to pledge to resolve the so-called "AJK issues" - air (water), jalan (roads) and karan (electric current in local slang) - on Nov 9, just weeks before the Sabah election on Nov 29.

Administrative clerk Rosimah Mohd Amin, 33, lamented that her home in Blok Tarapuli, a hilly suburb 20km from Semporna, remains off the Sabah water supply grid.