QC folk ask Maynilad: Where’s 24-hr water?

Residents of East Fairview, Quezon City are angrier than ever with Maynilad Water Services. It’s bad enough that Maynilad spokesman Jesus Matubis lied about their enjoying 24-hour water supply (Feedback, 15 March),when they in fact get it only two hours at dawn and dusk. What maddens them more is that Matubis did not bother to check the real score, when it is through their quiet subdivision that noisy Maynilad trucks short-cut each day to La Mesa dam. Talk about service.

Led by Barangay Kagawad Leo Susarno and homeowners president Edwin Tolentino, the residents invite Matubis to see for himself their daily woe. Never had they had round-the-clock water service since Maynilad took over Metro Manila’s west zone in 1997. They used to have four hours’ supply each morning and night, but Maynilad cut it by half starting Jan. 4.

They remember the date well. It was a Saturday, the last chance for belated Christmas parties. Most of them didn’t make it, since they hardly had water to bathe and cook potluck. Only three weeks before on Dec. 9, Maynilad issued notice to Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System that it was surrendering its concession. It vowed to carry on service for two more months, as its contract stipulated. Banking on its word, President Arroyo assured the four million dwellers in Maynilad’s jurisdiction of uninterrupted water supply. It was not to be. Today people in Novaliches-Fairview, the country’s biggest voting district, find it ironic that water hardly flows from the tap although they straddle La Mesa dam, Metro Manila’s main reservoir.

I personally checked with Maynilad’s Novaliches office what was the matter. An Engineer DeAusen said they’d been ordered to cut supply by half because of El Niño. So much for Matubis’s denial about cutbacks. Still, the excuse was lame. A check with the US Oceanographic Service that tracks the global weather phenomenon showed that it’s about to end this month, instead of the earlier forecast of July.

What really is the matter? Given Matubis’s claim of round-the-clock water supply in an area that is dry really, no answer is forthcoming. His rejoinder to my earlier piece (Gotcha, 10 March) was neither here nor there. I wrote that one reason for Maynilad’s higher charges but poorer service, compared to Manila Water Co. in the east zone, is its unabated nonrevenue water (NRW) lost to leaks and theft. The MWSS had noted that Maynilad’s NRW was 68 and 70 percent in 2001 and 2002. For that it was charging customers P15.46 per cubic-meter, more than double the MWC’s P6.75. MWSS directed Maynilad to reduce its NRW to manageable levels. In reply Maynilad petitioned in July 2002 for a rate increase to P34 per cu.m. MWSS set a condition that Maynilad infuse P4 billion to fix busted pipes and run after water thieves. Maynilad reneged, then asked for reprieve from paying its concession fee of P450 million a month. (It already had not been paying since Apr. 2002 and thus racked up a debt of P5 billion to date.) No way, MWSS said, but allowed Maynilad just the same an increase to P26 per cu.m. starting January. Like an unsatisfied brat, Maynilad simply returned its concession. For all that, Matubis admitted an NRW of 70 percent only in 1998. He left out the succeeding years’ figures.

Another reason for Maynilad’s higher charges is its hiring of 40 French management consultants at P1.5 million each per month, or a total of P720 million a year.The consultants have not improved Maynilad any. Matubis now asks me to share "nuggets of wisdom on how to manage a water utility." My free advice: just do your job. For instance:

Marissa, a resident of East Fairview, reported to the nearby Maynilad office that the man renting her house, John Bernaldo, had installed an illegal connection. For a week she kept calling them to do something. When nothing happened, Marissa’s husband went to Maynilad’s head office in Balara. Only then did Maynilad cut the illegal piping.

In the course of reporting on Bernaldo, Marissa discovered he had not been paying for a year, from March 2002-February 2003, the little water that still registered on his meter. She asked why Maynilad did not cut off the service on the second month of arrears, as is its rule. A clerk shrugged that Bernaldo might have a contact inside their office to warrant such privilege. Marissa quietly paid the 12 months’ arrears of P9,000 and kicked out the cheating tenant. This week Maynilad billed her another P280 for late payment of bills that shouldn’t have piled up for 10 extra months, in the first place, had Maynilad been on the ball.

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THREE LETTERS. From my long-unchecked mailbox emerged these rejoinders to past columns. Sorry for the postal delay:

From SBMA board nominee Jaime Mendoza: "I flatly deny affiliation with the KMU and participation in organizing a KMU-affiliated union in a ‘plush Subic hotel’ (Gotcha, 12 Feb. 2003). I do not deny that I am active in promoting worker empowerment. My involvement with the labor sector started in my capacity as labor relations officer and later as manager of the SBMA employee welfare department under the previous administration."

Chief Supt. Marcelo Ele, PNP director for investigation, sent on Feb. 24 a compilation of field reports on the unsolved murder of Emilio Acosta on July 17, 2002 in Pililla, Rizal, which I wrote about in Nov. The reports denied that policemen dragged their feet and thus didn’t collar the suspect Maximo Raymundo although he lingered in town and even returned to the crime scene. The long and short of it is that Raymundo is still at large, even if listed among the town’s Ten Most Wanted.

From Drug Enforcement Agency chief Anselmo Avenido: "It is not true that PDEA is reluctant to touch the case of PBA players Taulava and Peña (Gotcha, 12 March 2003). The drug results we received on the players were not from the original test in which they were positive for marijuana use, but from a confirmatory test in which they were negative. They will undergo another test soon." Well, okay, but that’s not what your deputy Baltazar Balangauan told me on camera.

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