The MEU, which has 510 members who are regular employees of MCWD, held its election on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022.
They elected Sammy Suson as the new president.
Suson defeated the incumbent MEU president Abigail Ameria, who in August 2022 led the call for the resignation of lawyer Jose Daluz III as chairman of MCWD’s board of directors.
Suson got 285 votes, while Ameria garnered 179 votes.
Nine candidates under the ticket of Suson were also elected amid the 15 MEU positions available.
A total of 470 employees voted in the elections.
The president-elect said among his priorities would be the unity of the union members in the next three years of his first term.
“What my fellow officers and I want is for there to be harmony between the union, the management and the board. I think this is the most important of all because everything will follow if there is unity,” Suson said.
Suson is just waiting for the election committee to give him the go signal to take his oath of office so he can formally begin performing his new task.
Suson, who has worked for MCWD for 34 years, is the water district’s supervising warehouse officer and chairman of the MCWD Cooperative. He first joined MCWD in the late 1980s as a billing clerk.
SunStar Cebu tried to call Almeria, who has served as MEU president for two terms, to get her views on the outcome of the elections, but calls to her cell phone were not answered.
In a press conference in Cebu City last Aug. 18, the MEU led by Almeria called for the resignation of MCWD’s board of directors, citing fears on the privatization of the government-owned utility provider amid its poor corporate performance in the past two years.
Almeria said MCWD’s income had plunged from P211.35 million in 2019 to P34.27 million in 2021, and that the water supply that had been put to waste also skyrocketed to 30.05 percent in 2021 from just 23.66 percent in 2019.
Among other issues, Almeria also raised the matter of unverified reports that at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the aftermath of Typhoon Odette (Rai), the water that was supposed to be given free to the affected residents was sold instead.
Almeria also lambasted the board for procuring millions of pesos worth of vehicles instead of investing in the repairs of damaged pipelines that could have reduced the percentage of non-revenue water.
MCWD management explained that the decline in the net income for the past two years was mainly due to the pandemic as most commercial customers had temporarily ceased operations due to the lockdown.
Typhoon Odette also damaged water lines, causing leaks and water wastage, and that the massive brownout that cut water supply to consumers forced MCWD to rent water delivery trucks to serve consumers, increasing its expenses. The consumers were not charged for the water delivered to them, contributing to the increase in non-revenue water.
On Aug. 19, some 100 of MEU’s members staged a protest in a bid to get the chief executives of the local government units within the franchise area of the water district to join them in their cause.
MCWD serves the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, Talisay and Lapu-Lapu and the municipalities of Consolacion, Liloan, Compostela and Cordova. (PAC / LMY, CTL)