I THOUGHT all along that it was the responsibility of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) to ensure adequate water supply to its consumers. Turns out it is not so. Shame on me.
Turns out, too, that I am partly to blame, along with the other consumers, for “not paying too much attention on saving water.” The quote is from the honorable Alvin Dizon of the Cebu City Council. “We cannot deny the fact that some people are wasting water,” the gentleman said, “and we should also look into that.”
Dizon’s colleague, the also honorable Eugenio Gabuya, was even more emphatic in his defense of the MCWD board. It is not their fault, he thundered, that water is scarce in the city. It is not their job to extract water underground.
Whose job is it then? The consumers, the ones who demand that their faucets not run dry but are profligate with the precious liquid? (For your information, sirs, I use only one small pail of water when I take a bath. Surely, you’re not suggesting that I make do with an even smaller one?)
And why is this information/excuse surfacing only now? When we did not have water last summer, we were told that it was caused by El Niño, so please bear with us till the rains are back.
Then the rains came and yet while it flooded in most sections of the city a number of times, there was no water inside MCWD’s pipes. Oh, but it’s not the MCWD’s fault, certainly not its board’s. Maybe, God’s?
It is obvious now that the board does not plan for the future. That is not in their job description. And just in case Joel Mari Yu thinks that I am supporting a “power grab,” I am not referring only to his board. Incompetence has a history in the water district even as it continues to unfold.
So grin and bear it.
***
I remember what the village wit told a group of elementary schoolboys when he caught us tiptoeing on top of the fence of our municipal tennis court. The foolishness of the Filipino, he said, will go home to his body.
He would have told exactly the same thing to the residents of Naga who insist on returning to areas that have been declared off limits to habitation in the wake of the killer landslide that hit the area about this time last year.
A number of these families have received a P150,000 cash aid from the Naga city government in consideration of their promise to relocate elsewhere, according to the city mayor, Val Chiong. There is therefore an element of deceit in their return.
Val’s vice mayor and daughter, Kristine, moaned that most returning residents slammed the door on their faces when they asked them to move out. She has sought the help of the police to implement a forced evacuation.
If that still fails, city officials should stop trying and let nature take its course.