A sharp exchange in Parliament on Monday brought longstanding concerns about Fiji’s water losses back into the spotlight, with Opposition MP Vijay Nath accusing the Government of making no meaningful progress and the Minister for Public Works dismissing the criticism as baseless.
Nath told the House that the national water loss rate has effectively been stuck at 47 percent, pointing out that the same figure was reported in 2022. “In 2022 the percentage was 47 percent and again today he is saying that it is still 47 percent, that means no improvement has been made,” he said, urging ministers to explain what corrective action had been taken. He listed familiar causes for the high loss rate — ageing pipes, illegal connections, meter inaccuracies and billing inefficiencies — and pressed whether the solutions previously offered by the Opposition had been implemented.
Minister for Public Works Ro Filipe Tuisawau rejected those criticisms, defending engineers and staff at the Water Authority of Fiji (WAF) and saying the suggestion of stagnation was “hogwash”. Tuisawau told Parliament that water loss has fallen incrementally, saying the figure was around 50 percent three years ago and has since improved to 47 percent. He also reminded Nath of his own former role as Assistant Minister for Infrastructure, urging the opposition MP to acknowledge the “hard work being done currently”.
The clash underscores a core policy debate: whether the incremental improvements the Government cites are sufficient to address what critics portray as a chronic failure of infrastructure and service delivery. A loss rate of 47 percent means, by either account, that about half of treated water is not reaching paying customers — an efficiency and revenue problem that affects households, businesses and the utility’s capacity to maintain and upgrade networks.
Nath’s questions focused on whether technical and administrative fixes have been applied at scale: replacing or rehabilitating ageing mains, removing illegal connections, improving meter accuracy and tightening billing systems. Tuisawau’s response framed the issue as one of progress already being made and defended the competence of WAF personnel, but did not provide a detailed breakdown of specific interventions completed or timelines for further reductions.
The exchange comes amid continuing public concern about both water access and the financial sustainability of Fiji’s water infrastructure. The Water Authority of Fiji remains the central agency charged with managing supply, reducing non-revenue water and improving billing and customer services; Parliament’s debate signals closer political scrutiny of its performance.
For now the dispute leaves two competing narratives on the record: the Opposition saying loss levels have been effectively unchanged since 2022, and the Government arguing there has been a modest but measurable reduction in recent years. Lawmakers from both sides signalled they will continue to press the issue, with calls for clearer evidence of corrective measures and for WAF to demonstrate concrete results in reducing non-revenue water.