Last Update: 7:14 PM ET Oct 5, 2007

San Salvador, Oct 5, 2007 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Some 25,000 Salvadorans marched in this capital Friday to demand an improvement in water and sewer services in the Central American country. Accompanying the activists from around 100 grassroots groups were several foreign notables, including the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White.

He told Efe he was "very impressed with the people's capacity for organization" and that the "new role of non-governmental organizations is the best guarantee of a democratic future in this country."

White said he joined the march at the invitation of the organizers.

Angel Ibarra, head of the UNES environmental group, said that El Salvador "vies with Haiti in the worst drinking-water and sanitation services in the hemisphere."

In rural areas, he told Efe, "people walk three or four hours every day to get water" for household needs, while more than 40 percent of the country has no water service.

He said the aim of Friday's march, which concluded in front of congress, was "to put in the forefront the social struggle for the right to water" and "obliged the government to have a public policy that guarantees this human right."

Water "cannot be privatized, water cannot go on being destroyed as is currently being done," Ibarra said.
"There is no democracy if the people don't have water," he said, noting that marchers presented lawmakers with a letter asking them to pass a bill the march organizers put forward in March 2006 establishing a right to clean water.

On July 2, police arrested 13 people in Suchitoto, north of San Salvador, during clashes involving peasants and the police that coincided with the arrival of rightist President Tony Saca, who chose the city as the venue for a new "decentralization" policy that activists suspect is aimed at privatization of the water system.

Authorities subsequently charged all 13 detainees under a new anti-terrorism law. If convicted, the Suchitoto defendants could be sentenced to anywhere from 40 to 70 years in prison. EFE