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A decade of macro economic prosperity has not improved issues of inequality as basic as providing water and drainage services for citizens.
On Wednesday, the government launched a conference on improving water services for the country noting they are investing 400 million dollars a year to improve the conditions. The governments representative at the conference, Vice Minister of Construction and Sanitation Juan Haro Muños, estimated that the amount needed to provide water and drainage services for all citizens is 16 billion dollars and at that rate of investment it will take 50 years to reach the goal of universal services.
Haro Muñoz stated that the problem with providing universal services “is very big but we have to keep moving forward. We have to cover the gaps in stages. It is in that manner that the ministry is working. It is investing in water and sanitation projects. Projects that are integral."
However, those steps are not fast enough for residents of poor neighborhoods. Jenny Torres Picoy lives in a the poor neighborhood in Lima called Paraíso that has no public water or drainage systems. She is forced to buy water brought by trucks to her neighborhood and she has to pay up to 8 times the cost of it in wealthier areas. Torres explains, "sometimes I don't wash my children, sometimes I don't wash clothes in order to save water. Because water here is not wasted. You can't. I have to save the smallest quantity of water. And sometimes here you order water and they don't want to come. You have to buy water but at the rate [the sellers] want. Or otherwise they don't give you water."
Jenny's family is one out of million people who are in the same situation in the metropolis of Lima, one of the driest cities in the world. The neighborhood association of Paraíso has been trying to get water and drainage services unsuccessfully. Pedro Paredes, President of the Residents Association Residents of Paraíso, explains, "the process to obtain water here in Lima is very tricky. So tricky we can't do it. We can obtain certain prerequisites but not all. I estimate that here we are going to have to wait for 20 or 25 years for us to obtain the water and drainage that we so desperately need."
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