THERE are no plans to privatize Cagayan de Oro City Water District (COWD), and any future plans or proposals to privatize it will be refused, an official of the COWD insisted on Thursday.
Eduardo Montalvan, chairman of the COWD Board of Directors, and Engineer Bienvenido Batar Jr., the water utility’s acting general manager, on Thursday, March 22, admitted that there were letters of intent submitted by the Metro Pacific Water Investments Corporation (MetroPac) to take over COWD’s water distribution and septage or waste water treatment functions along with a promise to address the problem on the non-revenue water (NRW) of the water facility.
"From the very start, we already told them that we will not accept their proposal. What is the basis of those people saying there is already a proposal? Do they have documents that the water district is already privatized? None, so the source of that information is fake news," Montalvan said.
Montalvan said MetroPac did provide the COWD board with its track record on NRW, and its expertise on septage and water distribution.
But Montalvan said COWD is already halfway through solving the NRW after acquiring a loan from the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP). As for septage and distribution, they are exhausting all efforts to solve these problems, he adds.
"Yes they are experts but the COWD is handling these portion of the operations so we will not accept," he said.
Batar said although they already refused MetroPac's offer in writing back in 2016, the COWD still cannot stop them from submitting a proposal.
As of now, Batar said there are still no concrete steps taken on the supposed privatization of the water facility.
Dismissed general manager engineer Rachel Beja had earlier said that the idea of a ‘takeover’ was first introduced by MetroPac to COWD’s previous Board of Directors in October 2016. In 2017, it was again reintroduced to the new Board of Directors and was finally discussed and presented just this February 2018.
MetroPac declined to issue any statement on the issue when pressed for a comment.
Meanwhile, Montalvan justified the actions of the board against dismissed general manager engineer Rachel Beja saying the board "was not very happy” with the way the water district was managed" during Beja's time citing non-openness between her and the board, and Beja's failure to fill positions in the COWD.
Montalvan also explained that a general manager is a confidential position, and therefore a different set of Civil Service rules and regulations can be imposed against her.
"This law or regulations that I followed is only for the general manager, it is not applicable to all employees so that is why we can terminate her, because hers is a confidential position," he said.