If Malta keeps taking water for granted it could end up like the least developed countries with huge water scarcity problems, according to SOS Malta CEO Claudia Taylor East.

“For the past 10 years, SOS Malta has focused on the collection of rainwater in underdeveloped countries through simple inexpensive systems.

“But if, in the meantime, we do not sustain our water sources and the island runs out of water in 15 years, it means we’ll end up like these least developed places in the world,” she said.

Ms Taylor East was speaking at a conference organised by the General Workers’ Union and the Anti-Poverty Forum about the availability of water as a human right.

The two entities are also supporting a European Citizen Initiative petition launched on Wednesday by the European Public Service Union, which is inviting the European Commission to propose legislation that enforces the human right to water and sanitation.

It also promotes the provision of water and sanitation as an essential public service.

Through the ECI, one million EU citizens can urge the European Commission to push proposals for legal acts in areas where it has the power to do so.

But hydrologist Marco Cremona, who was also present at the conference, insisted that if water was a human right we had to make sure we had a constant provision of the resource.

“However, the problem of water scarcity in Malta is persistent.

“We do not have the essential infrastructure to collect rainwater and keep it from going into the sea but, at the same time, we’re taking water from the sea and use reverse osmosis systems to convert it into usable water,” he said.

Every year, the Water Services Corporation extracts less groundwater and relies more on reverse osmosis water. This means that in 15 years’ time Malta would depend completely on the reverse osmosis system, he said.

Mr Cremona called for an autonomous regulator with enough executive and enforcement power that would ensure there was enough water to satisfy our obligations to respect the human right to water.

The petition, entitled Water And Sanitation Are A Human Right: Water Is A Public Good, Not A Commodity, can be signed at the Millennium chapel in Paceville, the Workers’ Memorial building in Valletta until November or online at www.right2water.eu until August 2013.

A hard copy of the petition form can be downloaded from www.right2water.eu/signature-forms.