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BY MAE SINGUAY
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BACOLOD City – The employees’ union at the Bacolod City Water District(Baciwa) is already blocking the proposed joint venture with a private entity.
Baciwa Employees’ Union president Claudio Salmo believes the joint venture will only lead to the facility’s privatization.
Metro PacificWater Investment Corp.(Metropac) may eventually take over the water district, and this will lead to higher water rates, Salmo claimed.
Salmo said Baciwa general manager Mario Macatangay invited him and other union officers to discuss the “unsolicited proposal.”
Metropac offered to rehabilitate the Baciwa’s distribution line within 30 years under a build-operate-transfer scheme.
But Salmo said they fear they will experience what the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) in Iloilo City is going through.
He said they toured the MIWD two weeks ago and learned the latter also had a joint venture with Metropac.
The private company is supervising and managing the water district’s entire distribution line, said Salmo.
Under the joint venture, new employees will be hired, and it is up to Metropac whether or not to rehire the existing employees, he said.
At the MIWD, all the employees have resigned, and Metropac paid them 200 percent of their monthly salary multiplied by their number of years in service, Salmo claimed.
If the joint venture pushes through, income sharing would be 80 percent for Metropac and 20 percent for Baciwa, he said.
This may lead all water district employees to resign and leave the Board of Directors behind, Salmo warned.
Salmo stressed the union wants better service for consumers, and that includes reasonable rates. “They (Metropac) are profit-oriented [and] not [into] public service,” he said.
The union and Metropac will meet on Sept. 23 to discuss the proposal.
Baciwa director David Villanueva said he is open to the proposal.
“Our problems will be solved only if we have enough financial resources,” which Metropac could provide, he said./PN
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