tv Prime Interest RT September 12, 2013 11:30pm-12:01am EDT
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i. the population of pakistan totals one hundred eighty million and it's still growing in lahore love there are ten million people clean drinking water is in short supply. for nestle introduced pure lies bottled water was a rare sight in pakistan. now nestle dominates a vast market that it created itself i grew up in a city where you could go just like anyone else would also water and you would get a glass of water for free without any fear of its quality or it sounds and what's happened over the last ten to fifteen years i mean in my own consciousness is that i have seen and witnessed a replacement of drinking water a commodification of drinking water. i want to see that it's nestle that's done it
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it's been a confluence of factors nestle appeared on the scene it started providing your life drinking water and all of sudden coca-cola shows up if he shows up and then a whole bunch of private local manufacturers want to sort shows up as well all producing clean water clean water because of the terribly old and creaky infrastructure of the sanitation authority and then before you know it everywhere you go if you ask for a glass of water i have to be fifty rupees. the most out of this water is not drinkable we have to drink it as this is the only water available once we drink this water we get different stomach diseases. the water is too dirty you have to boil it filter it. out and then drink it. if you have
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a meal you have to rush to the toilet because the water can't be. stood. there long water worms inside they're moving inside we don't show this water to the children otherwise they won't drink it and everything will be a mess. this leap year life is the safe alternative delivered directly to. the service for the well to do. we film at the home distribution station in the upmarket area is gone but. i introduced myself to the station manager and asked for permission to film. what is a problem so. you get what. you like what you put up with what you said it's ok i don't really radio.
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so. the university of management sciences in lahore and this elite institution hardly anyone drinks tap water and your life is a success story. i think a lot of the success of your life is nestle's marketing. that was good it was targeted to words but income people because assuming that you can always get water fleet who would be a premium for it most probably the poor people will not. in any case they can't afford the prices so it is you know the class of upper middle class and nestle brodsky and the skin was because of their marketing and i saw their distribution muscle you know their ads were very interesting lot of emphasis on quality and market that you can trust.
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it was fashionable to be walking around with bill. life in hand. you know it was making a statement about themselves also so it was not just functional benefits it was position on that. that if you are you know a modern person if you are. you know person who's health conscious did in some sense the jetset as a pikestaff. i think honestly and part of the water companies have been able to effectively appeal to a part of the pakistani psyche that. likes things like is the appeal to a lifestyle i read somewhere recently that a lot of the cola manufacturers decided to go into making bottled water because they knew that the market for cooler was limited because it's so clearly unhealthy for you but the market fall drinking water is unlimited it's a constant supply so it's just a question of being able to effectively commodified drinking water and i mean i've
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seen it happen before my eyes in the last twenty years and it's not necessarily was not this early it was in the realm of your conspiracy theory i'm sure at some level this is part of a business plan put forward by a company that look here's a market where there's nobody drinking bottled water if we go in and do this this this all of the sudden we have ten million consumers how is that. really. about forty kilometers from the business news cheap computer factory. when the company introduced people in life to pakistan some ten years ago it was
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not from here. right next to the factory. village. to village population. the arrival of nestle brought extra employment but the factories also blamed for the biggest problem in the village. is a lack of clean drinking water. out other guy in our opinion has taken our water from us nestlé puts its own tube well in the factory now the water has become very dirty. all along the way of the water level used to be one hundred feet now the level is down to three hundred to four hundred feet. we worry a lot. of. the wells used by the population no longer reach deep enough. around the factory
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several wells and from trying. to do. a lot of the relating to groundwater is unclear it's unclear who owns the groundwater who has a right to do it whether the state has a right to regulate groundwater where the people who own land over the groundwater have a right to the resource or whether a company can come and be for the rights of groundwater these issues haven't been thrashed through legally economically or on any sort of policy for of yet and it remains to be done. because nestlings booming business with pure life the company has been pumping water out of the ground. but what effect is this having on the ground. and on the quality of the more to a drunk by the people of the village. i asked nicely party stone about to start
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a countdown. but got no reply. what. you don't want to get it is your time medical people tell us the water is not safe . for kids shouldn't drink it this girl is always sick bonnie's monday if you keep on giving water to the kids they keep on going to the toilet. if they can't digest the water. they tell us to boil the water first and to kill the germs johnny. yes you cannot would you but we are poor people we can't afford to boil all the time money. here in bunty deal with nestle has no good neighbor policy but the villages have sent a petition to the company they too would like to have access to the clean water deep
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down under their village nestle has turned their request if the we've asked them for it to boil. least they should provide us with a small pipe with an outlet of water through the wall he bought it out of the. with such a solution we the villagers could fetch water this way with cans in the body about the little to nothing of what they could show us a little juster of respect yes the in the end is really stealing the local water sources from people and that's their life their livelihood and the livelihoods and lives of their children don't forget that border is relatively small businesses open the ocean so made a fake or that was. selling it cows for ciro point sera sera sera ninety percent of the freshwater being used. i mean it's not look even a troubling do it even let. it do what they should do
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a sixth international human rights forum opened this morning in a certain. event is usually a peaceful affair but this year is different because of the participation of nestle's chairman peter brubaker. members of the swiss workers' union say that nestle itself violates human rights and has no place in such a forum you could catch people have to buy expensive bottled water but poor people cannot afford it this is not a body human rights. have to decide. to simply say the border is a human right is perhaps not enough in reality it is not a matter of whether water is a human right because quite clearly it is it's more a question of how we can implement the human rights. we shouldn't reflects so much from whether water is a human right but rather reflect on how to ensure permanent access to water in
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daily life. that says there are also a few other basic problems which need solving. the most important point without question the more must be invested in. water infrastructure. and secondly there should be no subsidies for the owners of swimming pools and golf courses and for biofuels produced from plants cultivated specifically for this purpose. but there should be subsidies for water for the purposed and for nature. lagos is the biggest city in africa here there is no such thing as tree. everybody has to buy. the poor rely on the sachet more locally produced but also with dubious fall into. the city
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where the public water supply has failed is an opportunity for those who want to sell. videos and multinationals and invest into what's up nestle them to have also got a call up that is producing. a many of us with a muslim fund so you see. these. multinationals. understand the importance of what they know that in one jury. is still it's you know if i'm biased age inside the government has already taken hold of providing enough wonderful nationals on for the citizens industry is indeed profiting and exploiting the weakness of the. time in it's the best is loaded the wrong end of the state is the other not a citizen who is helpless that's not live above the law is expensive that
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he barely made the nigerians. news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images go girl has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations are ok. i know c.n.n. the amazon b c news have taken some slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close and for the truth and might take. off. for goods because one whole attention and the
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live . live. crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. located in the good of lagos is the cocoa it's a slum neighborhood built on stilts. will give a human rights to water is nothing but a phrase that. the slum dwellers have to buy their drinking water from businessmen who have set up water stations and this is.
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not like. it's not easy to fetch water. that's it's a long way to the water stations. doing sometimes the pumps don't work because there's no petrol. then you have to go to another station that is even further away. and there are only four stations around . for a family of twelve the daily budget is six dollars half of that we used to buy water. in the marketplace empty pet bottles all sold pure life a cocoa style. the slum continues to grow on its own rotting garbage. the reality in the global south is so powerful now it is such
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a life and death issue i mean more children die every day from dirty water than from h.l.v. aids more traffic accidents and malaria put together is the number one killer and so when you have that kind of life and death situation and then a company like nesta comes in and says oh we've got the answer here life is yet ceremony going to sell the water that we're going to take from your very own aquifers when there are no public taps and when you turn the water on half the time nothing comes out you. other half when it does it's polluted and you would lose it then there there you know then i i have to go beyond saying that a serious sponsible to say that this is almost a criminal act. you know a city has one of the best public water supplies in the you list. it still. is on the rides in this town.
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live. from untouched nature direct to the downtown apartments poland spring has become the top selling spring. with its population of eight million new york is the biggest beverage market on the american means to coax. everything in the usa i love the beverage industry uses up more than eight hundred cells and tonnes of plastic. four out of five bottles in the u.s. end up as garbage along roadsides all in the same. the shelves in the shopping center as of today piled up with the garbage of tomorrow. new yorkers drink
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bottled water when they have access to the cleanest best water in the world it comes from the catskills it is the cleanest safest water you could possibly drink it's just marketing it suddenly became cool and they connected it to health and they even told us we needed a classes a day which by the way is not true and they and they told us that we had to always have it on our little hydrating tool that we had to have it on us at all times so i talk to kids now and they'll say ok i'm trying to understand what you're saying but . how would i get from my house to my school without water i mean this is brilliant marketing and you know they've made tons of money telling us basically a lie. from new york to mame. i need to know the latest on the legal wrangling about the pumping stations welcome to a special edition of radioactive grass roots environmental and social justice news . topic is on large scale corporate action and community control
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nestle the world's largest food and beverage company. spring maine extracting from the state with intentions to expand. objecting to the sale of their water find themselves in positions of limited recourse with regulatory processes. in the town of friedberg the bulldozers are in action. the battle around the second pumping station went up to the highest court in the state of maine. the. last. of the company will be loading up its tankers with local spring water legally. was granted only the right to limit the number of trips. set its limit at thirty six
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thousand. this is sad sad tragic commentary on. what's legal. and what's that you know is it legal to steal is it ethically morally it. was legal and was ethical and moral are two different things. you don't betray people you know it's like the courts that is supposed to defend you be trading in you feel you feel betrayed. they're orchestrating the process so that they will eventually went with their wind because people are beat down and there they are tired of the fight or they don't even have the money to pay for the lawyers. nestle has unlimited funds you know we
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don't have the legal funds we don't have the the p.r. machines behind us but if you look at their message in freiburg their good neighbor policy and you look at their message throughout the country they're all very self-serving they have a project called project wet for water education in the community school systems well all cheek they did a pilot program in freiburg isn't that interesting and then they can say look we did a pilot program for project wet for water education look we're helping the community well you're helping the community conserve water while you're taking one hundred fifty million gallons out of a community. in
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the wildlife because of the story had another ending here nestlé has been defeated . the company must remove its test wells from the protected area the towns of shapley and infield have to plan to hold water in their territories to be a fundamental right. water belongs to nature and may be used by the local residents. for. long scale
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pump. and commercialization of them is no longer permitted. both sadly and new fields have signed to the right to local self-determination. a right which is anchored in the constitution of the usa. all of us have the same passion and once we found out that we couldn't you know work under the regulatory approach we had to find something in order to keep them out and that's how we found that were the right space and we want to around again to educate the people about the right space and we pretty much said if you want nestle into your community then go with a regulatory approach that will regulate them if they come in fill out the permit cross or t.'s dot their i's you can not say no to this large company and god forbid if you ever want to regulate anything stricter with them once they're ran because you will never win in court as freiburg and now you have to as an instrument which
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is quite new described ordinance something. new in stating. this is where shopping is board of selectmen since meetings in fact the board had opposed the local women's demand to carry their fight to constitutional level so we wanted to get the right space or on the town warrant where everybody would vote it well the selectmen again said no we're not going to do it and you know this is a majority of citizens they're the who elected these people so they said no we're not going to do it so they refuse the citizens petition they refused to allow the citizens to the order that they gave to their own select right so there's a loophole in the law which laurie about where we can call our own tell me to hire a coach without the shall we water rights of all the government did i do. at this time although think they were without because we're going to we're so indicate by raising your reality with one. hundred and fourteen votes to sixty six the women
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won the day for water as a fundamental right and against nestle. to shapley neighboring new field voted likewise. the wildlife preserve will remain untouched. by everybody the reason why we're here today is to celebrate our victory our awesome victory in the new field unshackling thanks. it really was a whole grassroots af it and if it's i think it's just unbelievable because many of us were never activists and it's all thanks to you when i just want to say that i'm very humble having that experience and i think of all of you as as friends and again thank you very much thank you i.
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are. are. it's a small victory achieved by two small towns in the him to listen to his name. but who can resist in countries where there is little democracy and even less water in pakistan or in nigeria. plain drinking water is becoming increasingly precious some can afford the luxury of bottled water. but the others. too who does the water on our planet.
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breaking news for you this hour here on sleeping patients and staff at a psychiatric hospital in north western russia caught in a massive fire overnight with. cigarettes suspected of forcing the. syrian government starts heading towards chemical. details which are being thrashed out by top russian and u.s. diplomats in geneva it's off to washington oppressed the poles and its war drive against syria. however america is still sticking to its belief that damascus gassed hundreds of civilians in august a man who was held hostage by rebels in syria now a challenge.
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