BY PRINCE GOLEZ
Manila Reporter
MANILA – Amending the bulk water supply contract between Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) and Flo Water Resources Iloilo, Inc. is not the answer to Iloilo City’s water problem, according to Cong. Jerry Treñas.
In their 10-year water supply contract, Flo Water is supposed to deliver 15,000 cubic meters of water to MIWD daily.
But MIWD’s smaller pipes can only accommodate from 5,000 to 6,000 cubic meters daily at the most.
“Billions of pesos are needed to improve MIWD’s distribution pipes – repair old or busted pipes, change to bigger pipes and put in place new pipes for areas not covered before,” Treñas told Panay News yesterday, citing a World Bank study.
Clearly, he said, MIWD does not have the capacity to do these.
For Treñas, the best solution is to privatize MIWD.
“Remember, (they) only serve 20 percent of their total franchise area,” he lamented.
The 80 percent, Treñas claimed, end up buying “expensive” but “unhygienic” water using drums, pails and tankers.
He was echoing the position of Ilonggo Senate president Franklin Drilon that rehabilitating MIWD to improve its services won’t do.
The senator had said “P1.5 billion” is needed for the water district’s rehabilitation but “the government does not have that kind of money to throw into MIWD.”
“Money will just leak out of the MIWD, and problems will remain unsolved,” said Drilon.
MIWD corporate legal counsel Roy Villa previously said the water district’s privatization won’t be easy.
The process may be mabudlay (difficult) and madugay (lengthy) but it is the lawyers’ job to “study legal matters” and “make complicated legal matters simple,” said Treñas, a lawyer.
Villa had said MIWD cannot be privatized unless Presidential Decree 198 or the “Provincial Water Utilities Act of 1973” is nullified.
Treñas said he and Drilon will help in whatever way they can for MIWD’s privatization./PN
