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Sign the petition against water privatisation in India

December 23, 2015
A group of trade unions in India is addressing a petition to the World Bank, calling on them to end their promotion and financial support of all forms of water privatisation and acknowledge the failures behind it.

To sign, please  send your organisation name and country to waterintern@stopcorporateabuse.org and please help circulate the petition!

Though unions in India have been fighting the privatisation of water in Nagpur for years, the World Bank and water industry are promoting Nagpur as a success to the world. Today, this model of water privatisation is being replicated in hundreds of cities across India, promising to devastate communities across the country. The union coalition in Nagpur will not allow this to continue unchallenged. They need your help to expose and oppose this privatisation agenda.

Please help send a strong message to the World Bank to stop supporting water privatisation across the globe, and recognize the failures of water privatisation in Nagpur, India.

To learn more about what is happening in Nagpur, please see Manthan Kendra's website, this Expose developed by Corporate Accountability International in partnership with Nagpur Municipal Corporation Employees Union, media coverage of the Pinocchio Award given to Veolia by 5 NGOs for its abuses in Nagpur, and the Nagpur case on the Water Remunicipalisation tracker.  

Here is the content of the petition:

To: The World Bank

Water is our most essential public resource, and it is vital that it be managed by public utilities for the public interest, not private profit. The World Bank continues to promote and fund water privatisation despite the failure of this model around in globe, in cities from Nagpur to Manila, Cochabamba to Paris. For years, the World Bank has promoted corporate interests at the expense of human rights, worker’s rights, public health, the planet, and democratic principles.

Now, the PPP model in Nagpur - which the World Bank was instrumental in establishing and promoting - is being used as the model for expansion to hundreds of other cities across India. This is extremely dangerous because the Nagpur PPP has been fraught with many well-documented problems, including price hikes, water shutoffs, delays, multiple breaches of contract, allegations of corruption, and exploitation of workers. A failed model is being knowingly forced on to Nagpur and that is why the failure in Nagpur is also being camouflaged under false reports and awards. If plans remain on course, this failed model will be replicated all over India, with terrible results for people, public health, development and democracy itself.

We stand in solidarity with communities in Nagpur, India who are challenging the disastrous water privatisation project in their city.  And we stand with people across India demanding an end to the World Bank-supported plan to roll out the failed Nagpur model to hundreds of Indian cities.

We demand the World Bank end its promotion and financial support of all forms of water privatisation and acknowledge the failures behind its glossy public relations. We stand in solidarity with people in Nagpur and across India demanding water for life, not for profit, now!

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