Page 2 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
August 5, 2019
East Timor parliament OKs sea border treaty with Australia
DILI, Indonesia (AP) — East Timor’s parliament has voted in favor of
ratifying a maritime boundary treaty with Australia that governs how the two
countries will share billions of dollars of oil and gas riches lying beneath the
Timor Sea. East Timor, one of the world’s youngest and poorest nations, and
Australia, one of the richest, signed a historic treaty in March last year drawing
their maritime borders, ending years of wrangling. It paves the way for
development of the offshore Greater Sunrise gas field. East Timorese
independence hero Xanana Gusmao said his country was losing $5 million a
month while the agreement remained unratified. He said the treaty will be
ratified when Australia’s prime minister visits East Timor on August 30, the
20th anniversary of a referendum that granted independence from Indonesia.
89 safely rescued after Mumbai office building catches fire
MUMBAI, India (AP) — Firefighters rescued 89 people after a nine-story
office building caught fire in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, an official said.
No injuries were reported. Sixteen fire engines battled the blaze and evacuated
people from the building using hydraulic platforms in the city’s Bandra area, fire
official Rohan More said. The building houses the offices of a state-run telephone
company. All of the 89 escaped without injuries, More said. The firefighters
restricted the blaze and smoke to the third and fourth floors, where it started,
More said. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. Television images
showed people breaking window panes and waving to firefighters to evacuate
them. A woman who was rescued told the New Delhi Television news channel
that she and some others were rescued from the fourth and fifth floors of the
building. A newly introduced robot, Robofire, was used to control the blaze, the
Press Trust of India news agency reported, without giving details. Fires are
common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by
builders and residents. In February, 17 people were killed by a fire in a six-story
hotel in New Delhi that started in an unauthorized rooftop kitchen.
Unexploded grenade found near ruling party office
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — An unexploded grenade was discovered next to a
township office of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party in
Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, police said. An officer who declined to give his
name because he was not authorized to release information said police cleared
away the grenade soon after it was discovered in the early morning and are
investigating. He gave no other details. No one has claimed responsibility. The
NLD is headed by Aung San Suu Kyi, who also heads Myanmar’s government.
The party will contest a general election next year. Suu Kyi and her party hold a
majority of seats in parliament, but are forced to share power under rules in the
constitution imposed by a previous army-led regime. A pro-military party is the
NLD’s biggest challenger, but some radical nationalists are also bitter critics of
Suu Kyi. Aye Win, a local NLD official who works in the office, said police were
checking security video for clues.
Women charged with violating surrogacy, trafficking laws
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A court official says three Cambodian
women have been charged with violating surrogacy and human-trafficking laws
after they gave birth to babies they delivered to Chinese nationals in Vietnam. A
Phnom Penh Municipal Court spokesman said the three women are being
detained pending further investigation. The Phnom Penh Post quoted a senior
anti-human trafficking police officer as saying the women were detained by
Vietnamese police and returned to Cambodia after having illegally crossed into
the country to deliver their children to Chinese nationals for $8,000 per baby.
They were charged in court. Cambodia’s anti-surrogacy law carries a penalty of
one to six months in prison, while the human-trafficking charge is punishable by
15 to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Afghan radio station closes down following Taliban threats
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A local radio station in eastern Afghanistan was
forced to shut down after repeated threats from the area’s Taliban commander,
the head of the station said. Ramez Azimi, director of the Samaa station in the
city of Ghazni, the capital of eastern Ghazni province, said he received phone
calls as well as written warning notes purportedly from the Taliban commander.
The commander was not identified. Azimi said Taliban insurgents, who control
several districts in Ghazni province, threatened them because three of the
station’s 16 employees are women. The Taliban are against women’s rights to
education and work. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, denied the
insurgents had threatened Samaa. The Taliban currently control nearly half of
Afghanistan and are more powerful than at any time since the October 2001
U.S.-led invasion. A local radio journalist was killed recently in neighboring
Paktia province. The police said it was not immediately clear if the killing of
Nader Shah, a newsreader for Radio Gardez, was linked to his work or a
personal dispute. The developments came despite stepped-up efforts by the
United States to find a negotiated end to the country’s nearly 18-year-long
conflict, America’s longest war. Afghan talks that brought together the country’s
warring sides ended recently in Qatar’s capital, Doha, with a statement that
appeared to move closer to peace by laying down the outlines of a roadmap for
the country’s future. Azimi told The Associated Press this is its third closure in
the past four years. The station was forced to shut down twice in 2015, the first
time for a month after which it reopened thanks to mediation by the elders, he
said. Later that year it closed again, for nine months.
STOPGAP MEASURE. Indians stand in queues to fill vessels with drinking water from a water tanker in Chennai, the
capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. With the government able to meet only 40% of its water requirement,
millions of people are depending on water brought in tanker trucks because of an acute water shortage caused by drying
lakes and depleted groundwater. (AP Photo/R. Parthibhan)
Parched manufacturing city
in India brings in water by rail
By Emily Schmall
The Associated Press
OLARPET, India — Amid the green
Yelagiri hills of southern India, the
train inches along the tracks, carrying
what has become precious cargo: drinking
water bound for Chennai, India’s parched
Motor City.
Demand for water in the manufacturing and
IT hub on the Bay of Bengal far outstrips
supply, forcing authorities to take extreme
and costly measures to serve the city’s 10
million people. And so, every day, the train
sets out on a four-hour, 134-mile journey, its
50 tank cars carrying 660,000 gallons of water
drawn from a dam on the Cauvery River.
The train is classic Indian jugaad, the Hindi
word for a makeshift solution to a complicated
problem.
Executive engineer K. Raju confessed this is
not the best engineering solution to Chennai’s
water problem. “But this is a timely way to
help and that’s all. This is not a permanent
solution,” he said. Building an underground
pipeline that brings in water from closer areas
would be better, he said.
As with other fast-growing cities in the
developing world, Chennai’s water woes were
years in the making.
Chennai’s population has more than tripled
in three decades, with people arriving to take
jobs at pharmaceutical research and
development labs, auto plants, and high-tech
industries. The runaway growth — combined
with poor maintenance of its four reservoirs,
ineffective sewage systems, and, more
recently, delayed monsoon rains — has left
India’s sixth-largest city high and dry. Or
J
nearly so.
Its reservoirs are empty, and it is relying on
dwindling groundwater sources and two
desalination plants for the vast majority of its
water. Since June, the water board in Chennai
has been turning off the taps for all but a
couple of hours a day.
In early July, the government of Tamil Nadu
state, of which Chennai is the capital,
approved a crash engineering project to bring
in water by rail for the next six months at a cost
of about $94 million. Raju’s team had just 10
days to lay the necessary half-mile of pipeline
and install a pumping system to put water into
rail cars formerly used to carry cooking oil.
The amount of water transported is just a
tiny fraction of the 130 million gallons a day
that the water board delivers to its customers.
The train sets out every day at sunset, and
just after midnight, it screeches into the city’s
mostly deserted Villivakkam railway station,
where men in hard hats and reflective vests
connect blue hoses to the cars. It takes four
hours for the water to be decanted into the
city’s water system.
The following morning, at one of the city’s
water distribution stations, Ranganathan, a
longtime water truck driver in Chennai, pulls
his colorfully painted vehicle underneath a big
water tap, fills up his rig and begins making
neighborhood deliveries. He puts in 16-hour
days, with no time even to eat, he said.
“People get excited once they see our
lorries,” said Ranganathan, who goes by only
one name. “On days if it becomes late, people
will start panicking. What to do? They are like
my mother, sister, who are worried due to
water scarcity, so we help.”
Continued on page 4
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84.25
42025
6.9387
2.1354
7.829
69.653
14237
42025
106.62
8694.0
4.155
112.06
157.8
3.393
51.63
65.079
3.7509
1.3752
1202.7
176.7
31.444
30.71
23202