City’s water supply ‘not enough’

THE head of the Leyte Metropolitan Water District (LMWD) admitted the water supply of Tacloban City is not enough for its consumers.

LMWD General Manager Nestor Villasin said the increasing number of water concessionaires’ big establishments, which need larger amount of water, and the existence of electric water pumps are the reasons why water supply is not enough in the city.

There are also allegations that Tacloban’s water concessionaires were enjoying the benefit of sufficient water supply before it came to a highly urbanized city. But now water supply started to slow down and some voluntarily disconnect their water connections at the LMWD.

“If you will compare our present situation to our situation five years ago, there is big difference and we still don’t have Robinsons that time,” Villasin said.

Robinsons alone needs more than 300 cubic meters of water every day but LMWD can only provide the establishment with more than 200 cubic meters.

There are also hotels and restaurants in the city that need water supply for sanitation purposes.

He said water concessionaires already exceeded their target concessionaires since 1980s and that electric water pumps contributed to the experiencing insufficient water supply in the city.

LMWD has now more than 29,000 water concessionaires, over 19,000 of them are from Tacloban alone.

To address this problem, LMWD constructed a booster-pump last year located at the vicinity of municipality of Palo.

“We are using it every night, to push water for as far as it could get to the city,” Villasin said. (Leyte Samar Daily Express)