Rajiv Rishyakaran, assemblyman for Bukit Gasing, said the Selangor state government’s proposed budget of RM100.6 million was not enough, although it was the biggest allocation of any state.

He called for an allocation of RM500 million a year, which he said would provide for repairs to 500km of pipes a year, based on a rule of thumb costing of RM900,000 to RM1 million per kilometre.

Rajiv urged the Federal Government’s water asset management company Pengurusan Aset Air Sdn Bhd (PAAB) to finance the pipe replacement projects in Selangor.

“By right PAAB should bear the full cost of all pipe replacement projects, but delays in such financing has forced the Selangor government to dip into its reserves to spend RM100.6mil to get this replacement moving along,” he said in a statement today.

“Even if we replace pipes at the rate of 500km per year, it would take us more than 10 years to catch up with the backlog.

He said the backlog was a result of the failure of Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas) to fulfil its duty to replace ageing pipes while the company was in private ownership.

“Every year, there are between 5,000-6,000 incidents of burst pipes in Selangor, an average of around 100 cases a week,” he said.

He said asbestos-cement pipes accounted for half of all burst-pipe incidents, although they made up only 6,000km of the 28,000km water pipe network in Selangor.

Two water supply companies, Puncak Niaga (M) Sdn Bhd and Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor, were taken over by state-owned Pengurusan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd in 2014.