Church weighs in on water privatisation in El Salvador

The Catholic Church and Jesuit-run Central American University (UCA) has delivered a study to Salvadoran lawmakers on water management in Latin America as the government mulled a law aimed at privatising the resource.

The study -- drafted in 2017 by Costa Rican specialist Lilian Quezada, with support from UCA -- shows that most Latin American countries have a state regulatory body that manages water with an eye toward the citizens' common good, UCA chancellor Andreu Oliva said on Monday.

He said the report handed to him earlier in the day was expected to allow members of Congress' Environment and Climate Change Commission to get a "better overview of the importance of water being managed by public entities, as opposed to the private sector".

"We brought this study because we see a closed disposition by the commission's right-wing legislators, who have already made up their minds about the bill they want to present in a plenary session, which will not represent the interests of society and aims to hand (water management) to the private sector," he said.

Oliva and El Salvador Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar Alas also gave lawmakers a letter requesting that UCA experts be included in the debate on water law, Efe news reported.

The archbishop had said on Sunday that the Salvadoran Catholic Church will continue defending the rights of the country's poor, demanding a "fair, efficient and equal" water law.

A 2016 study by the national ombud's office concluded that a shortage of water -- which has gotten worse with climate change -- will make life in El Salvador impossible within 80 years.

On April 14, 2015, the Salvadoran government decreed the lack of water a national emergency.

--IANS

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