THESE past weeks, I felt like a call center agent. Or an online teacher teaching English to Japanese or Korean students.

The bad news is that I’m getting paid for this graveyard shift, that period of time that runs through the early morning hours, typically covering the period between midnight and 8 a.m.

And I have to thank Baciwa (Bacolod City Water District) for that. But no thanks.

In this graveyard shift, water comes trickling at past twelve midnight.

Virtually the whole day, I usually go to sleep between 10 to 11 p.m. My body clock tells me to wake up to turn on the faucet.

I go back to sleep, only to wake up after 2 a.m. to turn off the faucet, which was by then spilling water from the plastic containers. By 6:30 a.m., no more water comes out of our taps.

And then I try to go back to my disturbed sleep, only to wake up, feeling like a zombie. I spend my day at the Philippine Mediation Center, dozing.

My body is demanding rest and sleep.

The other day, I had an exchange of woes with our office staff. One who lives in Villa Sngela says they get water from midnight to 5 a.m.

How about that? No water the whole day yet I have to pay for the water wastage. Look at Baciwa’s mission statement and one can see how the water utility is failing on its mission: “to accomplish its mandate to provide accessible, potable and affordable water...with utmost concern to the people and the environment.”

How can it talk of accessible water when we have no water for 17 hours? And the water that comes out has detritus which negates potability. We can forget that concern for its concessionaires. I don’t see concern, we experience callousness and unconcern. Daily.

Why are these public servants not being put to task by the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC)? It has jurisdiction over the practice of civil engineering covering among things flood protection, drainage, Water Supply (my emphasis) and sewerage works.”

Baciwa cannot pass the blame to the bulk water project. Concessionaires didn’t sign anything with them, but the water utility to them. But when we applied for water connections, Baciwa and its management has spelled out our mutual obligations: We pay the monthly bill, and the utility has obligations to us to provide us with “accessible, potable and affordable water.”

We in Alijis are fast approaching our breaking point. The Spanish-speaking world say “Agua vida” (water is life).With this situation, we might not be talking of graveyard shifts, but of the grave. Pure and simple.

(bqsanc@yahoo.com)