Sign deal or we take over
Credit to Author: Catherine S. Valente, TMT| Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2020 16:20:33 +0000
President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened Manila Water Co. Inc. and Maynilad Water Services Inc. to accept a new draft of water contracts or the government will terminate their concession deals and take over their water distribution services.
Speaking to reporters in Malacañang on Tuesday, Duterte said the government had readied the “draft” to replace “onerous” water concession deals.
“There is no contract. What we are ready to give to the parties, the distributors, is a draft, which we would like to be enforced instead of the old one, which we think is not good for the Filipino,” he added during a media interview.
The President said the existing water concession contracts were “null and void from the beginning” because of many provisions that violate penal laws of the Philippines, particularly the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
“I said that is not my problem. I have this draft, it’s either you accept it or not. You do not accept it? Then there is no contract,” Duterte added.
“I will have to operate the distribution system. It’s either they accept with no guarantee that they will not be prosecuted or if they do not accept it, then I will nationalize the water system and prosecute them for plunder or estafa on a large scale,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said Duterte was giving Maynilad and Manila Water the “option” to accept the “new” deals without the onerous provisions.
Duterte, according to him, reached the decision after the new water contracts prepared by the Office of the Solicitor General and the Department of Justice were presented during a Cabinet meeting in Malacañang on Monday.
“The Chief Executive is giving the water concessionaires the option of accepting the new contracts without any guarantee of [them] not being criminally prosecuted together with those who conspired to craft the very onerous contracts, which are void ab initio for violating the Constitution and the laws of the land,” Panelo said during a Palace news briefing.
“Should Maynilad and Manila Water refuse to accept the new agreements, the Chief Executive will order the cancellation of their present water contracts, mandate the nationalization of water services in their respective areas of operation and prosecute all those involved, directly or indirectly, in the arrangement that led to the present suffering of the Filipino people,” he added.
Panelo, also the Malacañang chief legal counsel, said Duterte “cannot keep a blind eye to this colossal rip-off.”
“Serving and protecting the interest of the Filipino people is the underlying principle that forms the basis of the President’s governance. All his acts since his assumption to the presidency were — and are — geared toward this end,” he added.
“The President stressed that water is a God-given natural resource, which can not be treated as a mere commercial commodity and exploited to rake in billions of pesos in profits at the expense of the Filipino people,” Panelo said.
The Palace official noted the “constitutionally flawed” concession agreements “violated every prohibited act under the anti-graft law.”
“The Filipinos have lost enormously with the unabated collections by these concessionaires despite the latter’s dismal performance in supplying, delivering and distributing water,” Panelo said.
“As the President previously uttered in righteous indignation and outrage to them: ‘If you will not give justice to the Filipino people, I will get it for them.’ There is a time for reckoning. That time has come,” he added.
The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) earlier revoked the extension of the water companies’ concession deals after Duterte threatened to file “economic sabotage” and economic plunder charges against Maynilad and Manila Water.
The President had claimed that Filipinos were “milked by billions” because of the two firms’ onerous water concession contracts with the government.
Reacting to Duterte’s tirades and threats, both the Pangilinan-led Maynilad and Ayala-owned Manila Water said they would no longer collect P10.8 billion in compensation that a Singapore-based arbitration court had ordered the Philippine government to pay the distributors.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in Singapore ordered the Philippine government to pay P7.3 billion to Manila Water for its losses.
In 2017, the tribunal also ordered the government to pay Maynilad P3.4 billion for not allowing the company to raise rates.
The 25-year water concession agreements were signed in 1997 during the term of President Fidel Ramos and extended in 2009 by the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo until 2037.
Amid the improvement in Angat Dam’s water level, customers of Manila Water and Maynilad have continued to experience little to no water supply given the limited allocation to the MWSS.
Normal raw water volume given to the two concessionaires is 46 cubic meters (m3).
Also on Tuesday, the top official of the National Water Resources Board (NWRB) announced that the agency had increased raw water allocation from Angat Dam, Metro Manila’s main source of water supply.
“With the slight improvement in Angat water level… [the] NWRB will increase allocation for the MWSS at 42 [m3 per second] for water supply in Metro Manila and adjacent municipalities/cities of Bulacan and Rizal,” Sevillo David Jr., NWRB executive director, told The Manila Times.
David noted that Angat’s water level, which stood at 204.38 meters as of Tuesday, remained below their desired water level of 212 meters to meet water supply and irrigation requirements in Metro Manila.
The allocation to the National Irrigation Administration was also raised to 20 m3 to meet irrigation requirements in Bulacan and Pampanga for this month, he said.
Meanwhile, the MWSS said issues surrounding construction of Kaliwa Dam had been addressed.
“The social and environmental impacts of the stand alone Kaliwa Dam project [are] minimal. Even as there are risks which [are] usual to any construction project, mitigation measures and safeguards have been put in place,” the agency said in a statement also on Tuesday.
The MWSS clarified that only the Kaliwa Dam project would be undertaken given the safety issues raised in an integrated Kaliwa + Laiban Dam System, a project originally proposed in 2013.
Moreover, consultations with indigenous peoples (IPs) of Quezon and Rizal have reached a positive outcome on Dec. 9 and 17, 2019 when the IPs and indigenous cultural communities of these two provinces adopted a resolution of consent or Resolusyon ng Pagpayag to the project.
“This stage, which is one of the several stages in the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process, shows that the IPs are able to conduct their own independent and collective discussions and decision-making in an environment where they did not feel intimidated, and where they had sufficient time to discuss in their culturally appropriate way, matters affecting their rights, livelihoods, knowledge, traditions, governance systems, natural resources,” the MWSS said.
The resolution also signified that the agency complied with the FPIC framework and that rights of the IPs are being respected by ensuring that the latter understood all of the implications of the Kaliwa project before giving their consent.
Kaliwa Dam, one of the projects in the agency’s pipeline that is expected to provide an additional 600 million liters per day, is meant not only to bridge the demand-supply deficit gap, but also reduce dependence on the Angat Dam.
Some groups have opposed the Kaliwa Dam project, saying it would displace IPs and flood vast areas.
WITH REPORT FROM JORDEENE B. LAGARE