The Wet Valley Crisis

Case studyPrepared for: Dr. Jeff.

Prepared by: Haliza. “Overview” Hissein. “The best managerial technique and suggestions” Dikko. “The main problem” Ben Lahcene. “Addressing the main problem”

Outlines

1. Overview.

2. The main problem.

3. Addressing the main problem.

4. The best managerial technique and suggestions.

1. overview Globally, water is under threat from depletion, pollution,

mismanagement and even from being hijacked by multi-nationals.

Hence, if a country has bad water governance, its water resources

would not be managed sustainably.

Klang Valley is a part of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur territory.

Since 1998, Klang Valley experienced a serious water shortage

and affected many residential in term of water supply.

The situation of water declining in Klang Valley since 1995, when

the director of Selangor Waterworks Department (SWD) presented

the impending water situation to the state government.

Generally, the causes contributed to the shortage of water in the

Klang Valley:

• Demand for water has been growing at

7.6% annually.

• Pipe leakages and faulty meter recordings.

River pollution.

• Shortage of manpower and financial

resources in the SWD (privatization).

However, there are internal and external

problems that caused the crisis occurred.

2. The main problem• The main problem in this case is Poor Planning. • Poor planning: The problem could have been avoided if people

are more proactive and do some long term planning instead of looking for short term solution to some complex problems. Mr. Junid

• The poor planning of the water crisis in the Klang Valley leads to other problems discussed below:

• Inter governmental relationship problem. The inter relationship between the SWD and the Selangor State Government. For example the early signal regarding water crisis in high possibility to occur by the SWD to the Selangor State Government in 1995.

• Shortage of staffs: Mr Junid had already explained many times that his department was facing a shortage of staff.

• Communication restriction due to insufficient communication equipment

required by staffs, no monitoring of lorry movement resulting in water

distribution process not effective and broken pipe because of pipe ageing

factor (installed since Malaysian independence time). For example time

factor since it take 30 minutes to 1 hour to fill up one tanker.

• Ethics: The problems that cause a temper flared up in the residents

because they didn’t receive water supply as promised by the SWD. For

example, the chairman said that the Selangor SWD had implemented

water rationing for 207 areas as a short term measure to overcome the

water shortage problem. The distribution of water was divided into 2

areas zone A and zone B, each would receive water supply for 12 hour

on alternate days.

• High demand of water consumption due to industrial

development and rapid population growth in the city of Kuala

Lumpur and Selangor.

• El-Nino and river pollution as factors paralyzing amount of

water supply during the crisis. Factories located along side the

rivers has been discharging great amount of chemicals

effluence which affect the water treatment plants.

3. Addressing the main problem

Which managerial approach to apply?

Traditional management

New public management

1) Intergovernmental relationship: Selangor

waterworks Department (SWD) need to coordinate and cooperate

together and harmonize the activities of the government during

this water crisis because the overlaps that occur in the

implementation process of the public sector activities are

inevitable, resulting from different forces (departments,

agencies, parties, politicians) that are involved in this sector.

• The best approach to address this problem here is the

traditional management approach because this approach takes

the view that managers have a more policy making focus and

as we have seen that there is an absence of policy making and

poor planning. This management style is as much, if not more

concerned, with how goals are accomplished. Also concerned

with making sure that policies are in place to ensure that

processes are in compliance with government regulations.

2) El-Nino, river pollution, high population

growth, rapid development growth:

all of those are external problems that contributed significantly in

this crisis and make it more difficult due to insufficiency in

decision making process as well as poor strategic planning.

3) Ethical problem:

ethical problem which is lying on the residents that everything is

okay and the situation in the hand “..The Chairman saying that

everything was under control...” page 126.

• Here we believe that the new public management approach

can be very helpful to eliminate those problems but with some

implication of the traditional approach like control from the

headquarters and control on inputs and procedures.

4) The shortage of staffs and communication equipment:

The problems here caused by lack of prioritizing and

misallocation of resources by the state water supply authority.

• New public management insure that the resources demand are

under check also make sure that we are doing more with less

means that public servants shall endeavor to ensure the proper,

effective and efficient use of public money and it focus is to

ensure client satisfaction and thus gives managers the flexibility

and tools to make decisions “hire new employees and purchase

new equipment” that will allow more efficient and effective ways

to solve and end this crisis.

4. The managerial technique

planning methods needs to be improved to address the main

problem because it :

1. guide and define the organization’s goal .

2. Identify the problem and opportunity to capitalize on.

3. Designing alternative course of action and forecast the

consequences of each alternative.

4. compare and evaluate the alternatives with each other and choose

the alternative that offers the most preferred outcome.

5. Implementing the plan through developing a budget, project

schedules regulatory measures and Gather feedback and review

progress.

Suggestions

1. SWD &SSG should make strategic planning by using the rational

planning technique which identifies the problem to be solved and

highlight alternatives course of action.

2. Designing a technology in management of water distribution

including 24 hour complaint hotline, computerizing water distribution

system and broken pipe detectors. Hence promoting and improving

distribution, creating control in water distribution to each area and

monitoring the schedule of lorry tankers operation.

3. Holding workshops and discussions with the technical about how to

handling the water crisis and enlighten them the importance of

making the right decision when a problem sets in.

4. They should Make Cooperation with the meteorology, climatology, geophysics institutions to get more advice related to water crisis and also recruiting more employ’s to solve shortage of staffs in SWD will enhance water distribution in the Klang valley.

5. They should relocate those factories located close to the river to new area or build industrial zone because there part of problem by

making pollution .

6. Issues of ethnic each of them should take his responsibility to serving public first and also decision making should build Based on the best interests of the collective, overarching community or

national good, not narrow interests of small or self-serving groups.