BF Homes residents: Give us water!

A homeowners’ group in BF Homes subdivision, Parañaque City will lead a motorcade rally to seek government intervention in their long-time problem concerning the lack of water supply in some areas in the subdivision.

Hernando Juatas, convenor of the Homeowners’ Welfare Advocacy Group (HWAG), said they are calling on all subdivision residents to join the rally tomorrow morning. Participants will assemble at the vacant lot along Aguirre Avenue.

The group alleged that 45 percent of residents in BF Homes have been without potable water for the last 20 years after the subdivision’s developer, Banco Filipino BF Homes Inc., which supplied power to its private reservoir, failed to settle its electric bills.

Juatas said it was in the 1970s when BF Waterworks, a private company, started delivering water to households in BF Homes through pipelines servicing approximately 60,000 households or 300,000 residents.

"As the years went by, water supply has become scarce until the problem became pronounced in the 1980s," he said, adding that the residents and local government have exhausted all possible remedies to address the water crisis in the last 20 years but to no avail.

The HWAG earlier appealed to President Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro on two separate occasions, requesting assistance so that Maynilad Water Services Inc. will be allowed to conduct repair activities in the subject subdivision.

Juatas said Maynilad is willing to provide this service but is hindered by a right-of-way issue with the developer.

He lamented that residents pay P95.11 per cubic meter of non-potable water from haulers compared to P17.53 being charged by Maynilad in other areas.

"On the average, a family of six spends about P2,000 a month for non-potable water delivered by trucks, compared to about P420 only if Maynilad water is available," Juatas said.

He noted that water delivery has become a multi-million peso business in Parañaque, with the 16,646 households in Barangay BF paying nearly P400 million to water delivery firms.

Meanwhile, the city government said HWAG should press the developers of BF Homes to allow the homeowners’ associations of each of the 70 zones to negotiate directly with Maynilad.

"The Parañaque City government is willing to assist in these negotiations just as it had successfully assisted the different subdivisions along the President’s Avenue leading to BF Homes, that are now enjoying ample water supply," City Administrator Noli Aldip said.

Aldip added that the city government has done its part by working with Maynilad to bring water to the subdivision although only up to the subdivision’s commercial center and some households in Phase I.

Maynilad said it cannot proceed beyond that and service the entire subdivision since the developers of BF Homes have refused to give them right-of-way.