Ni NOEL ABUEL
Nanawagan si House Ways and Means chair at Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda sa Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) na maging mas agresibo sa paggamit ng kapangyarihan nito na subaybayan ang mga local water districts para sa pagganap at pagsama-samahin ang mga ito para sa kapakanan ng publiko sa gitna ng patuloy na krisis sa tubig na pinalala pa ng El Niño phenomenon.
“An effective LWUA is critical to dealing with the water crisis, because they supervise the hundreds of water districts that provide for urban and suburban populations outside Mega Manila,” aniya.
“Their mandates are far-reaching, and include monitoring for performance and ‘to effect system integration, joint investment and operations district annexation and deannexation whenever economically warranted,’ as the law says,” dagdag pa nito.
Aniya, mayroon ding kapangyarihan ang LWUA sa pagpopondo upang mainsentibo ang pagsasama-sama sa pamamagitan ng paborableng mga tuntunin sa pagpopondo at mga pagsusuri.
“The new LWUA administrator, Vince Revil, means well. I support his efforts to conduct a national water inventory, and the P20 billion the Patubig sa Buong Bayan at Mamamayan project. But to ensure that operations and management of new water systems are efficient, we really need to consolidate water districts that are inefficient or non-operational,” pahayag pa nito.
“I call on the administrator to exercise that agency’s mandate to hold water districts to account more,” panawagan ni Salceda.
Sa pagtataya ni Salceda, humigit-kumulang 300 water districts ang kasalukuyang hindi gumagana o halos hindi gumagana at ang mga lugar na kanilang pinaglilingkuran ay walang gumaganang central water system.
“You could combine those water districts into clusters to make infrastructure investments more efficient. The thing with water is that it is infrastructure-intensive, it requires a lot of fixed costs, and it is only viable with enough revenue-paying users. So, if a water district is too small, or has too little demand, it’s doomed to fail – or will never mature to provide sanitation services, which are also expensive,” paliwanag pa ng mambabatas.
Nanawagan din si Salceda sa Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) at sa mga economic managers na magkaroon ng mga alituntunin at insentibo para sa mga local-government “water alliances” hanggang multiple LGUs na maghahati sa water management.
OnlineBalita news 