| May’s Water Woes
By Grace Uddin
davaotoday.com
Date published: Jan. 28, 2006
DAVAO CITY – The water utility firm Davao City Water District (DCWD) had a hard time explaining to the public why it had to increase water rates last year by as much as 60 percent. Consumers just couldn’t take it, with the workers’ wages remaining at their current level and the oil prices pushing cost of commodities up.
Dominador Lopez, spokesperson of the DCWD, said the firm would lose 6 to 7 million pesos in 2005 if the water rate increase will not push through. Lopez blamed the oil price increase for the rate hike.
In a document titled Water Rates Adjustment Primer (WRAP) presented by the DCWD, it said it needed some 248 million pesos for their whole-year electric consumption alone.
The paper further claimed that DCWD would be paying the taxes they had refused to pay to the city government for over two decades now. These are the 2% franchise tax and real property tax. All these taxes were not incorporated in the previous water rates computation, it said.
“The water firm has just bought a multibillion property in Matina highway. How come that it is losing?” asked Davao city councilor Jesus Zozobrado.
Other councilors also pointed out that the water firm is not even paying second extraction tax to the city. And how about the staggering 2.6 million pesos in honorarium it pays the five members of the Board of Directors every year?
Later, the councilors discovered that the water utility firm’s proposed 60 percent water rate hike will actually reach 71.6 per cent, because it will be implemented in a staggered basis. According to the DCWD proposal, 30 percent of the increase will take effect in July 2005, 20 per cent in the same month the following year and another 10 per cent in July 2007.
Under this scheme, a household paying 100 pesos a month for its water consumption would have to pay 130 pesos once during the proposed first increase in July 2005, 156 pesos in July the following year when the 20 percent increase will take effect, and 171.6 pesos in July 2007 when the 10 percent increase will take effect.
In other words, Councilor Angela Librado pointed out, “the increase is 71.6 per cent, not 60.”
This was enough to bring the public outcry to its height. Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who also opposed the increase, threatened to revamp the DCWD Board and later asked the water company to cut the proposed increase by half. Bowing to Duterte’s pressure, DCWD revised its figure to only 30 per cent.
In other news this month, Police Supt. Efren Alcuizar, regional director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, was shot while eating durian along the highway of Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur. Initial reports said that the whole thing was an accident but officials looking into the incident said it could have been foul play. Alcuizar died two days later, on May 29, at the Davao Doctors Hospital. (Grace S. Uddin/davaotoday.com)
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