Syabas To Exempt Poor Families From Paying Bill

The Selangor water supply company SYABAS is to exempt poor families from paying their water bills for a year, its executive chairman, Tan Sri Rozali Ismail, said on Sunday.

He said that SYABAS staff would make a survey to find out who should be given the exemption, regardless of ethnic background.

"Lower income families with many children to support will be given priority in the provision of free water," he told reporters here.

He said that SYABAS, which supplies water to Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, would review the situation next year.

Rozali said: "We had at times cut water supply to people whom we thought just did not want to pay their bills. But cutting the supply to poor families, people who have a lot of children to support or who are jobless would mean causing them further hardship."

He said that SYABAS would monitor the situation to make sure that only users who did not pay their bills when they could afford to do so had their water supply cut.

Rozali urged families given the exemption not to waste water.-- BERNAMA