I KNEW this could be premature to celebrate water flowing from our faucets. (As of now, our faucets are dry during an intense El Niño drought).
But for the past days, we in Alijis are miraculously experiencing continuous water supplies.
I knew our water shortages are not technical engineering snags or natural impediments, but human expertise. If there’s a will, there’s a way.
Unfortunately, Bacolod’s homegrown engineers failed to show that will.
I have to congratulate Bacolod City Water District (Baciwa) chair Lorendo Dilag that the board has inked the contract between Prime Water and Baciwa, and will start this February after the company's unsolicited proposal passed the evaluation of the Joint Venture Committee in terms of financial, legal, and technical aspects.
Senator Cynthia Villar said that Prime Water has been into a joint venture with water districts for the last five years. Prime Water which is owned by her eldest son, Paolo Villar.
“They have several joint ventures in different areas in Luzon and Mindanao. So I think they are doing it as ordinary business. They are offering to cities and towns to do a joint venture,” she said, adding that before her son entered into joint venture business with water districts, he has been supplying water in all Camella Homes where he started five years ago.
Usually, the local government units can only serve 40 percent of their customers and the other 60 percent has no water, she said. “You need to put up several lines to serve more customers and that he wanted to serve more people to have water and this could be realized through a joint venture. With government, usually, they don't have funds to expand.”
During World War II, the Great British Empire under its Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was never embarrassed to seek help from its former colony, the United States of America under then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to defeat Nazi Germany.
The same with then Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. For his huge ego for asking support from his “imperialist” allies, Stalin was not shy to ask for American aid to defeat the brutal Nazi occupiers.
Congratulations to chair Dilag for steering the water utility to seek help in building a Type II alliance between the government utility and private expertise. I was afraid that Negrense amor propio might get in the way. (bqsanc@yahoo.mail@com)