The Jose Daluz III camp said Cebu City Mayor Mike Rama is endorsing and supporting — “brokering,” one paper reported — the offer of Prime Water Infrastructure Corporation, owned by the Villars, to privatize Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD). Daluz himself previously said on more than one occasion that MCWD’s rejection of Prime Water’s bid was the reason the mayor wanted him removed as MCWD board chairman, who’s recommended, with two directors, for dismissal on charges of “gross incompetence, gross negligence and gross neglect of duty.”
Mayor Rama, on the other hand, spoke out to deny only after MCWD board member Judelyn May Seno disclosed Monday, June 19, 2023, that Rama hosted a meeting of Prime Water president Fe Rebancos with her and other MCWD officials early this year, last February 16. She said Prime Water sent a letter of intent dated February 12, which MCWD rejected last February 22.
Mayor Mike, quoted by SunStar Tuesday, June 21, said, “Blatant lie. With respect to Villar’s proposal, there is no privatization.”
Nothing else that may explain the general and ambiguous denial has come, as of this reporting, from the mayor or his city administrator Collin Rosell. Rosell just told the Daluz camp to answer the accusations that the City Legal Office investigated.
The two-line statement didn’t deny the breakfast meeting at the mayor’s residence. And the denial was not explicit, thus drawing the question, What’s the “blatant” lie: That Villar proposed the privatization of MCWD? Or that Mayor Rama endorsed it?
What the mayor’s published declaration seemed to convey was that (a) there was a proposal from Prime Water but it didn’t offer privatization or (b) that it did propose privatization but MCWD rejected it.
CIRCUMSTANCES, DALUZ SAYS, PROVE IT. Does MCWD Chairman Daluz have evidence of Mayor Mike’s clear endorsement of Prime Water’s privatization bid on MCWD?
Atty. Daluz enumerated to me Wednesday, June 21 these “circumstances” at the meeting “that would lead you to believe the mayor is endorsing” the Villars’ Prime Water:
[1] The meeting was conducted in his house. It would’ve been “more prudent” if it were held in his office, Daluz said.
[2] MCWD wasn’t informed of the agenda. Representatives of the water district were “surprised to find out” they were meeting with Prime Water. “MCWD is aware for a long time that Prime Water wanted to take over the district.”
[3] After Prime Water’s presentation at the said meeting, “the mayor came out and asked, ‘Nagkasabot na mo,’ as if it were a done deal for him.”
[4] One or two months before the meeting, the mayor called Daluz to a meeting, where he asked the MCWD board chairman’s view on privatization. Daluz told the mayor, No, and Mayor Mike “persisted and argued that the poor could not wait for access to water.” Daluz then suggested that the mayor discuss it with MCWD management and employees.
THE NAME MATTERS. A pending ordinance at the Cebu City Council seeks to create a council and an office on water.
Maria Nenita Jumao-as, manager of hydrology at the University of San Carlos Water Resources Center — one of the speakers at the public hearing on the ordinance during the Sanggunian regular session on June 14, 2023, said her organization supports the proposal. But she was a bit uncomfortable with the proposed name of the council and office.
Unlike most other people invited to such a City Council hearing on creation of a department, office, and/or council who wouldn’t care about its name, Jumao-as bothered.
Under the proposed ordinance, the new council and office will be called, take a long breath, Cebu City Water Resources Management and Protection Council, the policy-maker, and Cebu City Water Resources Management and Protection Office, the implementing agency.
Unnecessarily long, Jumao-as said. “Water management,” she said, already “encompasses the holistic facet of water resources,” scarcity and excess, including its conservation and protection. If you manage it, you also protect it. Besides, she said, she’s for “easing memory” by using a name easy to remember.
She didn’t cite, as classic example, the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council and Office. Her argument for brevity and conciseness may apply to the full names and their corresponding acronyms CCDRRMC and CCDRRMO. People afflicted by the length would rather skip mentioning the name or simply say “Disaster Office” or “Disaster Council.”
‘GUBAT BATOK BAHA.’ Nenita Jumao-as’s insight and that of the USC Water Resources Center call to mind Mayor Mike Rama’s war against floods or “Gubat Batok Baha.”
Jumao-as — a civil engineer, hydrologist and water resources management specialist — said the issues on water are:
(a) too little water, which worries those who need it for personal or business and industrial use;
(b) too much water, when floods damage structures, disrupt work and social activity; and kill people and other living things;
(c) polluted water, in case of seawater intrusion and high-nitrate concentration; and
(d) ineffective water governance or “fragmented water institutional setting. The proposed council and office would “unify efforts to provide water at the right time, in the right quantity and quality.”
Jumao-as didn’t mention Mayor Rama’s “Gubat Batok Baha” (War on Floods). Still the councilors must have seen some allusion to the mayor’s campaign, or at least its name, when she said “to fight water is a futile and senseless exercise because water always wins.”
The wisest way to deal with water, she said, is “first to know and understand it.” Study the water’s own law and order, which is “beyond human law.” Know how it occurs and affects particularly the human community, she said, for us to deal with water “effectively and efficiently.”
Nenita Jumao-as’s insight and that of the USC Water Resources Center call to mind Mayor Mike Rama’s war against floods or “Gubat Batok Baha.”
Jumao-as — a civil engineer, hydrologist and water resources management specialist — said the issues on water are:
(a) too little water, which worries those who need it for personal or business and industrial use;
(b) too much water, when floods damage structures, disrupt work and social activity; and kill people and other living things;
(c) polluted water, in case of seawater intrusion and high-nitrate concentration; and
(d) ineffective water governance or “fragmented water institutional setting. The proposed council and office would “unify efforts to provide water at the right time, in the right quantity and quality.”
Jumao-as didn’t mention Mayor Rama’s “Gubat Batok Baha” (War on Floods). Still the councilors must have seen some allusion to the mayor’s campaign, or at least its name, when she said “to fight water is a futile and senseless exercise because water always wins.”
The wisest way to deal with water, she said, is “first to know and understand it.” Study the water’s own law and order, which is “beyond human law.” Know how it occurs and affects particularly the human community, she said, for us to deal with water “effectively and efficiently.”