Latest news with #RM1.7bil
The Star
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Star
Kabul's growing water crisis
EVERY week, Bibi Jan scrapes together some of her husband's meagre daily wage to buy precious water from rickshaw-drawn tankers that supply residents of Afghanistan's increasingly parched capital. Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanisation, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change, meaning people like Bibi Jan are sometimes forced to choose between food and water. 'When my children have only tea for a few days, they say, 'You bought water and nothing for us',' said the 45-year-old housewife, describing reusing her supplies for bathing, dishes and laundry. Experts have long sounded the alarm over Kabul's water problems, which are worsening even as many international players have backed off big infrastructure projects and slashed funding to Afghanistan since the Taliban government took power in 2021. 'There could be no ground water in Kabul by 2030' without urgent action, the UN children's agency Unicef warned last year. Other experts are more cautious, citing limited consistent and reliable data, but say the situation is clearly deteriorating. A 2030 cliff is a 'worst-case scenario', said water resources management expert Assem Mayar. A boy sitting atop a potable water tanker on a hillside in Kabul. — AFP But even if slated development projects are completed in a few years, it 'doesn't mean the situation would become better than now', Mayar said. 'As time goes on, the problems are only increasing,' he added, as population growth outstrips urban planning and climate change drives below-average precipitation. The Taliban authorities have launched projects ranging from recycling water to building hundreds of small dams across the country, but larger interventions remain hampered by financing and technical capacity. They remain unrecognised by any country since they ousted the Western-backed government and imposed their interpretation of religious law, with restrictions on women a major sticking point. They have repeatedly called for non-governmental groups to reboot stalled projects on water and climate change, as Afghanistan faces 'some of the harshest effects' in the region, according to the United Nations. The water and energy ministry wants to divert water from the Panjshir river to the capital, but needs US$300mil to US$400mil (RM1.2bil to RM1.7bil). A dam project near Kabul would ease pressures but was delayed after the Taliban takeover. For now, Kabul's primary drinking water source is groundwater, as much as 80% of which is contaminated, according to a May report by Mercy Corps. It is tapped by more than 100,000 unregulated wells across the city that are regularly deepened or run dry, the NGO said. Groundwater can be recharged, but more is drawn each year than is replenished in Kabul, with an estimated annual 76 million cubic metre deficit, experts say. 'It's a very serious problem... Water is decreasing day by day in the city,' said Shafiullah Zahidi, who heads central Kabul operations for the state-owned water company UWASS. Water systems designed decades ago serve just 20% of the city's population, which has exploded to around six million over the past 20 years, said Zahidi. At one of Kabul's 15 pumping stations, maintenance manager Mohammad Ehsan said the seven-year-old well is already producing less water. Two others nearby sit dry. 'The places with shallower water levels are dried out now,' said 53-year-old Ehsan, who has worked in water management for two decades, as he stood over an old well. It once produced water from a depth of 70m, but a newer well had to be bored more than twice as deep to reach groundwater. At one of the two large stations in the city, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently procured four new pumps where only one had been functioning. 'If that pump collapsed for any reason, that means stopping the service for 25,000 beneficiary households' which now have uninterrupted water, said Baraa Afeh, ICRC's deputy water and habitat coordinator. Everyone in Kabul 'should have 24-hour service', said Zahidi, from the state water company. But in reality, Bibi Jan and many other Kabulis are forced to lug water in heavy jugs from wells or buy it from tankers. These suppliers charge at least twice as much as the state-owned utility, with potable water even more pricey in a country where 85% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Bibi Jan said she has to police her family's water use carefully. 'I tell them, 'I'm not a miser but use less water.' Because if the water runs out then what would we do?' — AFP
The Star
2 days ago
- Business
- The Star
A RM1.7bil ‘holy hole'
THE walls surrounding Ghana's national cathedral are ageing plywood. Its spires are yellow construction cranes, which have not moved in years. It frequently reverberates with singing – the singing of a choir of frogs that moves in whenever the cathedral's half-finished foundations fill with rainwater. Ghana's former president, Nana Akufo-Addo, spent around US$58mil (RM248mil) in public money on the US$400mil (RM1.7bil) cathedral project – a huge sum in this debt-saddled West African country. The new finance minister said in March that Ghana's economy was in 'severe distress'. The cathedral was designed by celebrity architect David Adjaye. But beyond the blueprints, there is very little to show for the money. 'They have only dug a hole – a big hole,' said Praise Chinedu, a student and a Pentecostal Christian. A well-thumbed Bible tucked under his arm, he was emerging from a morning service at Pure Fire Miracles Ministries onto a street humming with churchgoers, ice cream vendors and clamouring children. His brother John, who had been buying anointing oil, sidled up. 'God is not going to be happy,' he said. Across Accra, Ghana's coastal capital, citizens joke that the hole is the biggest and most expensive in the world. Ghana's former president Akufo-Addo. — Francis Kokoroko/The New York Times A valuable stretch of land surrounded by museums, bank headquarters and some of Ghana's ritziest hotels was cleared of government buildings for the church. That land is now thick with vegetation and bird life, unvisited except by scrap metal thieves and, occasionally in the rainy season, swimmers staging stunts for social media. The unbuilt cathedral became a symbol of economic mismanagement and a political battleground after Akufo-Addo said its construction was to fulfil a personal pledge he had made to God. Now that Akufo-Addo has left office, the project appears permanently doomed. The cathedral is now a major target of the new government's anti-corruption initiative, called Operation Recover All Loot. Last month, the government announced that it would no longer fund the project and dissolved the agency responsible for managing it. Africa is home to the world's largest Christian population. Ghana, where faith is especially important to young people, has seen a recent boom in church building. But the national cathedral project never attracted the support Akufo-Addo anticipated. Instead, construction stalled at its foundations as Ghana suffered its worst economic crisis in a generation. To many Ghanaians lately, a cathedral has seemed like the last thing the country needs, especially one with an estimated cost of US$400mil. The project began with much fanfare. In 2019, at a fundraising dinner in Washington, a smiling Akufo-Addo cut into a large grey, square confection – the planned cathedral rendered in cake. With a 5,000-seat auditorium and a concave roof referencing the curve of Asante royal stools, it was intended to be much more than just a cathedral. It was to be a national monument, similar to the Washington National Cathedral or London's Westminster Abbey, a place where solemn ceremonies of state – like presidents' funerals and royal weddings – would take place. Akufo-Addo, who was born into a Presbyterian family but became an Anglican as a young man, told the group gathered in Washington that the interdenominational cathedral would be a unifier for Ghanaian Christians, who represent more than 70% of the population. It would also be an offering of thanks to God for sparing the country from the epidemics, civil wars and famines that had plagued its neighbours, he said. But then he revealed a third reason for its construction. 'I made a pledge to God that if I become the president – after two unsuccessful attempts – in the 2016 presidential elections, I will build a cathedral to the glory of God,' he said, according to official readouts of the event. The statement turned out to be a gift to Akufo-Addo's opponents, who argued that the president should not be allowed to use public money as part of a personal bargain he made with God – let alone US$58mil of it. Paul Opoku-Mensah, the executive director of the agency overseeing the project, said demonising the cathedral quickly became 'a political strategy'. In March 2024, one member of parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, led a march to the construction site, cutting a red ribbon at its gate to poke fun at the president for commissioning what was still a giant hole. 'We are demanding that the contracts must be immediately terminated to avoid further financial loss to the state,' he said. If using the cathedral to target the president was a political strategy, it worked. John Mahama, a former president who promised to create jobs and fix the economy, pulled off a dramatic comeback in December's election. He made Okudzeto Ablakwa his foreign minister. Corruption accusations often take centre stage in Ghanaian elections, and the large sums involved in the national cathedral project convinced many Ghanaians that officials had been skimming off the top. A public ombudsman said procurement rules had been breached and recommended a forensic audit. But in an interview by the big hole in early April, Opoku-Mensah said he had nothing to hide and had handed over all the accounts to the investigators. He explained that the cathedral was not really intended as a church, but as a major monument that had needed state money to get started but would eventually become a profit-making magnet for visitors. 'It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the vision,' he said. Akufo-Addo also seemed befuddled about the controversy. 'I find it difficult to see what is so problematic about it,' he said in an interview in April in his book-lined home office surrounded by a lush garden. He mused aloud about whether people believed it 'would be too big a tribute to my leadership'. Now that the country's leaders have changed, few Ghanaians admit to supporting the cathedral. Those who do say Akufo-Addo and others should foot the bill – but not taxpayers. 'It should be funded through donations,' said Esi Darko, an architect, as she left church one recent afternoon in an Accra neighbourhood known as Christian Village. 'It shouldn't be imposed upon everyone because not all are Christians.' There are also around five million Muslims in Ghana, a country of more than 35 million people, and, lately, a growing number of atheists. 'Don't believe in God?' reads a billboard in central Accra. 'You are not alone.' — ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times
The Star
19-05-2025
- Business
- The Star
Paris kidnap bid highlights crypto data security risks
LONDON: New regulations threaten the security of the personal data of cryptocurrency users and may expose them to "physical danger", the platform at the centre of last week's Paris kidnapping attempt has claimed. "A ticking time bomb," said Alexandre Stachtchenko, director of strategy at French platform Paymium, referring to the way information must now be collected during cryptocurrency transfers under EU rules. He did not directly link this to a kidnapping attempt on Tuesday which, according to a police source, targeted the daughter and grandson of Paymium's chief executive. "If there is a leak of one of these databases from which I can find out who has money and where they live, then the next day it is on the dark web, and the day after there is someone outside your home," Stachtchenko said. Data theft is commonplace. On Thursday, the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, Coinbase, said criminals had bribed and duped their way into stealing digital assets from its users, then tried to blackmail the exchange to keep the crime quiet. Instead of paying up, Coinbase informed US regulators about the theft and made plans to spend between US$180mil (RM776mil) and US$400mil (RM1.7bil) to reimburse victims and handle the situation. Name and address Following the kidnapping attempt, Paymium issued a statement urging authorities to immediately reinforce the protection of companies within the sector, after other similar incidents this year. Founded in 2011 and presenting itself as a European pioneer of bitcoin trading, Paymium also cited "the highly dangerous aspects of certain financial regulations, either recently adopted or in the making". It added: "With the unprecedented organisation of massive and sometimes disproportionate collection of personal data, public authorities contribute to putting the physical safety of millions of cryptocurrency holders in France, and more widely in Europe, at risk." In its sights are rules which came into force at the end of 2024 and which extended the Travel Rule in place for traditional finance transfers to include crypto assets. The rules now require platforms to gather details about the beneficiary and, in return, transmit certain information about the customer to the receiving institution, including their name and postal address. Also to be disclosed is the "address" of a customer's cryptocurrency wallet, which shows details of their account and transactions, said Stachtchenko. Such sensitive data is sometimes exchanged and stored insecurely by certain players. Regulatory changes to tighten the rules on the crypto sector aim to "prevent the financial system from being used for corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking" among other criminal activities, said Sarah Compani, a lawyer specialising in digital assets. 'Nouveau riche' Data collection is carried out by parties including banks, insurance companies and crypto-service providers, which are "supervised" and subject to heavy "security obligations, particularly IT and cybersecurity", said William O'Rorke, a lawyer at cryptocurrency firm ORWL. In 2027, European anti-money laundering regulations will restrict the use of wallets and cryptocurrencies that allow the holders to remain anonymous. It follows a French law adopted last month to fight narcotrafficking, which targets anonymisation devices such as the cryptocurrency "mixers" used to render funds untraceable. There are many "legitimate interests" in having such tools however, said cybersecurity expert Renaud Lifchitz. He noted that they are sometimes used by journalists, or by activists opposed to an authoritarian regime which controls the traditional banking system. The debate is more "political" than "security-related", argued O'Rorke. The recent kidnappings and attempted kidnappings can be explained above all by a "somewhat nouveau riche" and "ill-prepared" cryptocurrency sector, he said. Since 2014, software developer Jameson Lopp has recorded 219 physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency users. – AFP
The Star
19-05-2025
- Business
- The Star
T7 Global showing likely to be affected by BHS delays
PETALING JAYA: Delays in the KLIA baggage handling system (BHS) project is expected to weigh on T7 Global Bhd 's earnings. Phillip Research cut its 2025-2026 earnings per share forecasts by 16% to 17% for T7 Global to account for slower work progress and lower margins. It maintains its 'buy' call with a lower target price of 34 sen from 66 sen a share on the company after rolling forward its valuation. The key risks to its stock call include operational delays at its existing mobile offshore production units or Mopus, further postponement in BHS works, and higher-than-expected operating costs Given that the BHS project accounts for 17% and 21% of T7 Global's 2024 revenue and profit after tax, respectively, any continued delays will weigh on its industrial solution division and pose downside risks to its 2025-26 earnings forecasts, the research house stated. T7 Global completed Phase 1 of the KLIA BHS upgrading work in KLIA Terminal 1 in February 2025. However, progress on Phases 2 and 3 has slowed due to the challenges of carrying out works within a live airport environment. The remaining works are now anticipated to be delayed by between one and 1.5 years from the original completion timeline of December 2025. A formal revision to the project timeline has yet to be officially confirmed. Phillip Research expects T7 Global's energy division to anchor long-term growth. T7 Global has emerged as the largest beneficiary of the recently rolled out maintenance, construction and modification (MCM) packages, having secured RM1.7bil worth of contracts. This lifts its total outstanding order book to RM4.5bil. Its Mopus, Elise and Shirley, which began operations in July 2023 and August 2024 respectively, are expected to contribute full-year earnings in 2025. The group is actively bidding for RM13.7bil worth of contracts. These include several floating production, storage and offloading vessels, MCM services, well services, offshore facility decommissioning and government-related projects. Given its strong order book and robust tender pipeline, Phillip Research expects the group's energy division to remain its primary earnings driver, going forward.
