[] Ruben Almendras, newly appointed member for civic sector in the MCWD board, tends to affirm part of the August 2025 assessment of Vice Mayor Osmeña. Osmeña reported then “a very serious situation” that threatens Metro Cebu’s water supply. Tomas talked of “mismanagement” and “anomalies” at the water district.
[] Almendras now discloses heavy losses, which he said started nine years ago or earlier “but they were massaging the financial reports.” Osmeña had also criticized the “lack of transparency” at MCWD.
[] MCWD’s official response to VM Osmeña last August said MCWD “continues to operate under normal conditions”: that is, “no looming water shutdown, no financial collapse, and no basis for alarm.”
ON DECEMBER 9, 2025, Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival Sr. announced he appointed Ruben Almendras as board member of MCWD (Metropolitan Cebu Water District). That increased the members to three, minimum number for it to transact business and function.
Lack of quorum had crippled the MCWD board, on top of problems caused by squabble over leadership at the water district between then mayor Mike Rama and then board chairman Jose Daluz.
Entry of Almendras, representing the civic sector, met the requirement of the law on local water utilities (Presidential Decree No. 198) regarding quorum.
BIGGER PROBLEM: HEAVY LOSSES. To Almendras though, a veteran at MCWD—having served for more than a decade as its board chairman from 1993 to 2004—there is a bigger problem at the water district: the state of its finances.
He told me Monday, January 12, 2026, “MCWD is losing immensely and on negative cash flows.” He added: “Revenue is less than cost of water, so no gross margin.”
Almendras didn’t use the word “hemorrhaging.” Still, “losing immensely” was graphic enough.
THE SCORE ON SUPPLY. There may be “no looming water shutdown”—as the MCWD official statement August last year explicitly claimed. But, Almendras told me last Monday, “water supply is inadequate to serve the demand.”
COST OF WATER. Instead of reducing non-revenue water (NRW), Almendras said, to augment supply by 30,000 cubic meters per day, and developing more surface/deep-well supply, MCWD “contracted 17 bulk-water suppliers at the cost of P43 to P78 per cubic meter.”
So, Almendras said, the weighted average cost of bulk water is almost twice the average selling price of MCWD. Thus, the need for LWUA to “rebase/increase” MCWD’s rates, for which he requested the mayor and vice mayor to “personally follow up” the national agency.
INITIAL STEPS. What has been done so far? Almendras said he met with MCWD’s department heads and “suggested operational and financial initiatives controls, which have to be implemented immediately.”
MCWD also has to “explore a P500 million financing from LWUA and DBP (Development Bank of the Philippines).”
LGU’S TIES WITH MCWD. The Local Water Utilities law, crafted during martial law when then president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. legislated by issuing decrees, was designed to protect water districts across the country from political meddling.
The mayor appoints MCWD board members but may not have the authority to fire them. The question was decided in the Cebu City mayor’s favor at the Regional Trial Court but the ruling is on appeal with the Supreme Court.
The mayor has no administrative control over the water district. At most, he has what Almendras calls the “general welfare responsibility” and “great moral suasion on the board and management.”
On the present case, the mayor is being asked to follow up LWUA on the costing of water. Not long ago, when the MCWD leaders quarreled with then mayor Rama, they told Mike to back off, LGUs have no business with the water district.
REVISIT OF THE WATER UTILITIES LAW may be a practical and sound move.
Under the existing law, the MCWD board is limited to policy-making and LWUA can take over management of a mismanaged water district only if it has a loan with the national agency and and are missing payments. MCWD shooed LWUA substitute directors from Cebu, citing absence of authority. The Cagayan de Oro water district similarly evicted LWUA representatives.
The matter of supervision and control is “the least” of MCWD’s current problems, Almendras had said. Yet prevention and solution of water district ills apparently must need an overhauled structure or system of oversight.
The glut of anomalies that VM Osmeña last year talked about MCWD may have been caused in a large part by a faulty system of supervision and control.
Perhaps congressmen and congresswomen from Cebu City and the province can study the law and see how regulation of local water districts can be run better.
Keeping the water district efficient and honest, without “undue” intervention of politicians, seems to be the purpose the law must serve.
WAS THERE A COVER-UP? VM Osmeña last August complained of “lack of transparency,” along with allegation of “mismanagement” and “anomalies.”
But MCWD then, in its official statement, stressed that MCWD was running normally: no crisis on water supply, no problem with its finances.
That was last year. Almendras believes MCWD’s losses started nine years ago or earlier. But, he said, “they were massaging the financial reports.”
That’s a charge of cover-up, for which some books must have been “cooked” for the numbers to look as they do “under normal conditions.”