"The President’s directive to facilitate the construction of the long-delayed Kaliwa Dam Project is a positive development that would help solve the recurring water crisis in Metro Manila."
"The President’s directive to facilitate the construction of the long-delayed Kaliwa Dam Project is a positive development that would help solve the recurring water crisis in Metro Manila."Let’s clear the air about this: Should the two water concessionaires in Metro Manila, namely Maynilad Water Services Inc. and Manila Water Co. Inc., be blamed for the water crisis that gripped Metro Manila residents last summer and is likely to be repeated again this year?
It would appear that that’s not the case at all. The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System has in fact already admitted that the below-normal water supply last summer was the inevitable outcome of government’s failure in the last 50 years to build an alternative water source to Angat Dam in Norzagaray, Bulacan. This dam supplies 97 percent of Metro Manila’s water needs.
Moreover, the MWSS said that Angat Dam’s water can no longer meet the water demand of the metropolis between 2020 and 2025. This underscores the need to build the New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam Project as soon as possible.
Hence, President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to facilitate the construction of the long-delayed Kaliwa Dam Project, using an ODA loan from China, is a positive development that would help solve the recurring water crisis in Metro Manila.
In the wake of President Duterte’s order to the Department of Justice to review the concession agreements (CAs) with Maynilad and Manila Water, one other issue that has cropped up is that these agreements are onerous because they have led to a big increase in the water bills of Metro Manila consumers.
The two water concessionaires dispute this. They are saying that the national capital region’s 18 million water consumers actually enjoy lower monthly bills compared to other urban centers in the country and even to other big cities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Statistics compiled by the government’s Local Water Utilities Administration indicate that Metro Manila consumers using 10 cubic meters (cu.m.) of water per month pay only about P104, which is actually the lowest among 12 highly urbanized cities in the Philippines. Consumers in Baguio City pay the highest monthly rate of P370 for the same 10 cu.m. of water—or over three times the bill paid by users in the national capital. San Jose Del Monte consumers pay the second-highest rate of P280 a month, followed by Angeles, Bacolod, Batangas, Cabanatuan, Cagayan de Oro, Dasmariñas and Davao cities along with Metro Cebu and Metro Iloilo.
LWUA data also say that Metro Manila water rates are lower compared to select Asia-Pacific cities consuming 15 cu.m. Metro Manila’s P18.28 per cu.m. is midway between the highest rate in Sydney, Australia, which is equivalent to P99.63 per cu. m. and the lowest rate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which is equivalent to P7.53 per cu.m.
The two water concessionaires also emphasize that consumers in Metro Manila enjoy cheap water rates at present because they submitted lower-than-expected bids during the 1996 auction under the Ramos administration. The bidders managed to offer low water rates for consumers because of “sweeteners”, rather than “onerous” provisions that were included in the privatization contracts to attract big investors abroad, since a huge amount of money was needed to reverse Metro Manila’s water crisis resulting from MWSS mismanagement, and incompetence.
Because of the huge investments by the two water concessionaires, water supply coverage is now 99 percent, as one requirement imposed by the government was for the two concessionaires to connect water even to millions of shanties in slum areas.
The good news for Maynilad and MWC is that according to the MWSS, the government does not intend to pre-terminate the 1997 contracts. This is welcome news for Metro Manila residents because they will continue to enjoy paying the cheapest monthly water bills among Philippine cities and a select group of urban centers across the Asia-Pacific region.
On the part of Maynilad and MWC, they are said to be ready and willing to enter into renegotiation talks with Department of Justice-led interagency team of government lawyers because they are confident that their 1997 contracts are clean and could stand scrutiny with a fine-toothed comb.
What’s going on at DICT?
Uh-oh.
Department of Information and Communications Technology Undersecretary for Operations Eliseo Rio Jr. has just tendered his resignation, citing the lack of transparency in the disbursement of hundreds of millions of pesos in confidential funds ostensibly for surveillance and intelligence-gathering.
Well, cybercrime is all-too-real nowadays. But as has been pointed out by observers, surveillance and intelligence-gathering shouldn’t be functions of a civilian agency like DICT, whose mandate is to improve public access, promote consumer protection and industry development, and formulate the country’s cybersecurity policy.
Surveillance and intelligence gathering on cybersecurity threats, should be the job of the police, the military and perhaps even the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency or NICA.
In an interview with another broadsheet after his resignation was reported, Rio—a retired brigadier general and the DICT secretary before President Rodrigo Duterte tapped former Lt. Col. and former Senator Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan to lead the agency—said DICT’s confidential fund for 2019 amounted to P400 million in 2019 and P800 million for this year, or a total of P1.2 billion. Confidential funds do not undergo the normal audit process; these can be spent by the agency head without having to explain expenses to the Commission on Audit.
Rio said the confidential funds were requested by Honasan even while he was still senator for expenses in connection with cybersecurity activities.
The DICT advanced P300 million in cash for confidential expenses on three occasions—P100 million each on Nov. 22, Dec. 2 and Dec. 17 last year. These were made in the name of Honasan.
But it’s not just over the issue of confidential funds that Rio tendered his resignation. He cited conflict with Honasan’s new appointees and said that he was left out in decision-making despite the fact that he was supposed to be in charge of DICT operations.
I for one had strong misgiving about Honasan being appointed as DICT secretary. It appears that the law creating the agency says that the DICT secretary should have had a fixed number of years of experience in the field, and that doesn’t mean just knowing how to use Word or some other programs in a computer.
I suspect that another reason for Gringo’s appointment is that it’s a reward for his unwavering loyalty—and possibly his deafening silence—amid the administration’s bloody war on drugs.
Besides, Duterte has time and again said he prefers former military men in top positions in the bureaucracy because he believes they cannot be corrupted, despite strong evidence to the contrary.
Honasan should clear the air regarding Rio’s resignation as the latter’s revelations tend to cast a dark cloud on his stewardship of a vital government department. We’d be glad to publish his side in this space in keeping with the right of reply.
ernhil@yahoo.com
