Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Carmen dad ‘happy’ over scrapping
CARMEN Municipal Councilor Gerard Villamor is “happy” with the recent development on the Carmen bulk water deal between the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) and the Ayala Consortium.
Villamor said this will be good for the consumers of MCWD because Ayala’s water rate is quite high.
But he emphasized that they are still willing to share the northern town’s water and deal with other interested firms, as long as they will only use the surface water of Carmen’s Luyang-Cantumog river.
He said the termination of the negotiations between MCWD and Ayala means other players will be able to join and they will get a better deal and option.
Capitol, however, refrained from commenting on the recent development.
“We don’t want to be dragged into something that we do not have full information,” Capitol consultant on information Rory Jon Sepulveda said yesterday.
Villamor is one of those who opposed the MCWD-Ayala deal, saying there were illegal insertions in the contract that are not beneficial to the town.
He said among those insertions is that they have agreed that Ayala will only tap the surface water of Luyang-Cantumog River but the contract stated that they can tap from all the town’s tributaries.
Ayala is expected to deliver an average of 40,000 cubic meters of water a day to MCWD.
Villamor resigned as councilor last year because he was disappointed that his colleagues did not punish the town council secretary whom he blamed for the “illegal insertions” in the contract.
Villamor also pointed out that Ayala failed to deliver its promise of P3 million for the improvement of Carmen’s local waterworks system and to conduct a hydrology study.
Carmen is projected to earn P0.22 for every cubic meter extracted from its river, but the cost of water set in the agreement between Ayala and MCWD is P24 per cubic meter.
But he reconsidered his resignation after Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia mediated. (MBG)
