INTO THE FOXHOLE

MIWD board girds for legal battle vs LWUA

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

THE board of directors of the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) will resist the ploy of the management team and the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) to strip them of their office.

Directors Adrian Moncada and Danilo Encarnacion said the move of MIWD general manager Le Jayme Jalbuena and LWUA is treacherous and inimical to water consumers in the city and province.

LWUA administrator Daniel Landingin earlier stripped the office of the Iloilo City mayor the power to appoint the next MIWD directors.

Landingin based his assertion on the provisions of Presidential Decree 198 which state that the city or municipal mayor can appoint the directors if 75% of the service connections are located within the city or town. Otherwise, it would be the provincial governor who will appoint the directors.

Citing reports from Jalbuena, Landingin said service connections in Iloilo City fell below the 75% benchmark, thus Governor Arthur Defensor Sr. is the appointing authority of the MIWD board.

The LWUA later nullified the appointment of the 5-man MIWD board on the same ground.

Encarnacion said Jalbuena violated protocols when he kept Landingin’s memorandum from their attention.

Encarnacion said the board must be informed of official communications to and from LWUA being the policy-making body of the water district.

“What he did was treacherous because he hid those communications from us. He should have showed simple respect to the board by letting us know about those data he was sending and receiving from LWUA,” Encarnacion said.

Moncada, meanwhile, said Jalbuena’s preoccupation with dismantling the board has kept them from progressing in the bulk water supply project aimed at improving MIWD services to consumers.

“The terms of reference and bidding papers we required the management team to work on was riddled with mistakes. So we had no choice but to return the documents to them. When we showed the papers to Jalbuena, he was also surprised with the mistakes we saw, which is an indication that he does not read the papers we send to them,” Moncada said.

One mistake the directors noticed is the restrictive requirements set by the management to prospective bidders.

Moncada said they will only require contractors to supply the compulsory water volume at a pre-approved price. It is up to the contractor to decide on what technology and strategy to use as long as they deliver the contracted water supply.

Encarnacion said they were supposed to publicize an invitation to bid for the project this week so they can proceed with the bidding process next month but it did not happen.

“The project will be delayed and the consumers will suffer the water crisis. We thought we would be working smoothly with the intervention of Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog. But here they are again busy in putting us down in cahoots with LWUA,” he said.

Moncada said a similar case happened in Cebu where the city mayor and governor are fighting over the power to appoint the water district’s board but LWUA never intervened.

“Why is LWUA absent from that dispute? Why is LWUA so interested in Iloilo City?” Moncada said.

LWUA chairman Prospero Pichay, a defeated senatorial bet and remnant of the Arroyo administration, has been very active in taking over the MIWD board since last year.

Pichay had offered the takeover move to Mabilog but the mayor decided to take things matter into his hands and rein in the board and management team to work together.

Encarnacion and Moncada said they are ready to wage legal battle against LWUA and the management team as regards their appointments.