By HERBERT VEGO
MANY weeks ago, we sent a reporter to interview Dr. Danilo Encarnacion, reinstated chairman of the Board of Directors of the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD), to verify its financial status in the wake of reports that they had applied for a P150-million bank loan.
The district used to enjoy liquidity, with a bank deposit amounting to more than a hundred million pesos. It seemed unbelievable that the district could not pay its debt to its bulk water supplier, Flo Water Resources.
“We no longer have a hundred million pesos in the bank,” Encarnacion sighed, blaming their predecessors or the interim board. “Kadamu sang activities ang board nga ato. Kon diin-diin lang sila ga-meeting. Madamu in such a way nga wala ma-program maayo. Gasto lang sila nga gasto.”
To this day, however, Dr. Encarnacion has not specified how the interim board had destabilized the water district.
But I remember that in 2010 when his group – then led by chairman Celso Javelosa – had not been replaced yet by three successive “interim” sets illegally appointed by the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA), they were already admitting that MIWD by itself was supplying water to only 20 percent of its coverage areas, producing an average of 1,250,000 cubic meters of water per month, of which only around 750,000 cubic meters flowed through consumer faucets; the remaining 500,000 cubic meters or 40 percent was wasted in pipe leakages and pilferages. At an average cost of P28 per cubic meter, that loss added up to P14 million monthly or P168 million yearly.
Adrian Moncada, the vice chairman then and until now, aired his suspicion that some high-level employees of MIWD themselves were engaged in selling water to hotels and restaurants in their private capacity. What if they were the pilferers of the district’s water?
If “yes,” then they were sabotaging their own employer to keep themselves in competitive business. They kept MIWD water scarce by diverting it to their commercial water tanks and leaving leaking pipes in disrepair.
In fact, the Javelosa board held an MIWD department head liable for selling water in her private capacity but ran short of identifying her water source, and for “moonlighting” as accountant for private clients. On July 7, 2010, the MIWD board passed Resolution No. 156 reminding all employees of Section 7 of Republic Act 6713 that disallows public officials from engaging in unauthorized private practice of profession.
The board tried to probe the “conflict of interest” and involvement of top-level personnel in water pilferage. But it only succeeded in reaping the hostility and animosity of the general manager at that time, Le Jayme Jalbuena, As a result, Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) chairman Prospero Pichay replaced the “interfering” board, albeit illegally, with “interim” LWUA appointees.
While the PNoy administration eventually sacked Pichay, replacing him with Ilonggo lawyer Rene Villa, the latter appointed his own “interim board” despite the protestation of the regular board that it was either the Iloilo City mayor or the Iloilo governor who had the appointing authority by operation of law under Presidential Decree 198.
And so the regular board members could only look masinulub-on from the outside.
It was only sometime last year that Regional Trial Court Judge Danilo Galvez affirmed the authority of the Iloilo Governor to appoint the MIWD board of directors in line with Section 3 of Presidential Decree 198, providing that if more than 75 percent of the total concessionaires are found in the city, the appointing authority shall be the city mayor, or the provincial governor if otherwise.
Gov. Arthur Defensor Sr. did right in reinstating the regular board, with Dr. Encarnacion as chairman.
The reinstated board, in turn, opted to “rotate” the post of general manager, kicking out Jalbuena and replacing him with Edgar Calasara, and recently with Amarylis Castro. Ironically, both Calasara and Castro had previously “cooperated” with Jalbuena and are therefore not expected to spill his beans.
By then, the P100 million-plus money in the bank had disappeared and no effort seems to have transpired to count the ways it had been malversed.
While it’s true that the governor has succeeded in patching up differences between the board and the district’s bulk water supplier, Flo Water Resources, the former’s inability to pinpoint and sue the culprits behind the disappearance of MIWD’s money points to either privatization or private-public partnership as the solution to keep the water district viable.
More on that later./PN
