Seares: Fired MCWD directors can sue over lack of due process. But will they?

Joel Mari Yu, chairman of the board of Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD), has reasons to complain about wholesale dismissal of directors from service.

The more visibly solid basis is their termination without due process. Yu and the four other board members were served individually a “You’re-fired” notice without having been heard.

Media reports say Cebu City Mayor Edgar Labella merely wrote them about the consumers’ “dismay over the water service,” referring to the resolutions passed by cities and towns served by the water district.

Only for ‘just cause’

Under Presidential Decree 198, the Provincial Water Utilities Law of 1973, directors may be removed “only for just cause” and determination of “just cause” requires due process. If there was due process, the public didn’t know about it.

The dismissal, however, is subject to review and approval by the Local Water Utilities Authority. If Yu and his colleagues will sue over an “illegal dismissal,” they may have to wait for LWUA’s action on Labella’s move. The Oct. 30 opinion of LWUA Acting Administrator Jeci Lapus didn’t give any approval; it merely said the mayor can do so “within the bounds of the law,” consistent with the legal requirement that the dismissal must be for just cause.

Why they might not

Would they go to court over the termination?

The four appointees of then mayor Tomas Osmena might sue, if the BOPK leader would tell them so. Politically, that would jibe with the initial response that the sacking of MCWD directors was a “power grab.”

But some of the fired directors may opt not to go to court.

[1] The water crisis is for real and cannot be denied or glossed over. Public outrage this time is supported by the respective LGUs of the consumers. As the sitting directors, they cannot avoid responsibility, even if not totally, for the shortage.

While some critics believe past MCWD directors–and maybe along with them, the MCWD managers and city councilors of Cebu City and other local governments affected by the MCWD service – should be strung and lynched. That literal punishment is not allowed of course. And the past MCWD and LGU leaders are already gone. As existing and visible symbols of MCWD inadequacy, the present directors are here and their sacking is partial retribution for the ongoing failure.

Call them part of the sacrifice to appease the angry public.

[2] Each director’s position carries a fixed term of six years but the water crisis has removed the legal or moral reason for the appointee to insist on completing tenure.

The consumers now expect Labella to bear the bulk of the weight of responsibility to solve the water problem. He cannot be given the reason for not doing it by directors who aren’t his appointees latching on to their right of fixed tenure.

Yu’s explanation

Chairman Yu cited a number of reasons for the water shortage: “growing gap between demand and supply,” advice of experts to tap surface water sources through dams having been ignored (“nobody did anything”): “a confluence of events,” with the “sh*t literally hitting the fan,” worsened by “the massive waterproofing of Cebu’s topography.”

For the last part, he cited the conversion of the 65-hectare golf course of Club Filipino into Ayala Business Center and of the Lahug Airport into I.T. Park. The loss of open spaces is multiplied, Yu said, by the amount of open land used for subdivisions, other housing developments, office buildings, etc.

Their board, Yu said, is barely two years in office and “cannot be the cause of the crisis.” Who are to blame then? The crisis has been there for 30 years, he said, blaming “weak government and politics.” “Definitely NOT our board,” he said.

Explaining crap

Well, his board is the one that is here when the “sh*t literally hit the fan.” When the crap is all over the place, the people running the water district cannot duck by claiming the board is blameless. And you say the LGU leaders are the ones to be faulted for being weak and rabidly partisan?

Clearly the MCWD board and the boards before them had an urgent message to the public and the decision-makers of government. And the present board is only telling it now. Yu even took a roundabout route for it. He mailed it to his friends before media got wind of it. Even as sh*t was already flying, he didn’t want his public to know.

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