A PROADMINISTRATION legislator demanded on Tuesday the mandatory refund of billions of pesos collected from water consumers for projects of Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) concessionaires that were never implemented, which she claimed were being passed on to consumers.
In a privileged speech, Party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy of Bagong Henerasyon said that while MWSS officials concoct titles to call the 34 different bonuses and financial perks they receive in one year, they have also shown efficiency in formulating various charges to pass on to consumers the cost of billions of pesos worth of projects that have yet to be implemented.
Dy said that unknown to consumers, the cost of these “ghost projects” have been surreptitiously inserted in the monthly water bills, such as the fees for the so-called earthquake fund, sewerage improvement and water-meter deposits.
Dy said the MWSS and its concessionaires, the Ayala-owned Manila Water Co. (MWC) and the Maynilad Water Services Inc., have been shortchanging water consumers by collecting fees for services not yet rendered.
She blamed the MWSS-sanctioned rate-rebasing exercise as the cause of the imposition of exorbitant water-service charges that have increased from an average of P4.02 cubic meters in 1997 to the present P30.34 per cubic meter for MWC customers.
The legislator claimed that Maynilad hiked its charges from P7.21 per cubic meter in 1997 to P33.32 today.
Dy explained that under the rate-rebasing scheme, MWC and Maynilad are allowed to adjust charges to recover past expenditures and provide sufficient funding for their future projects.
“It means that the concessionaires are allowed under this strategy to recover their expenditures, and such costs are directly passed on to the consumers.”
Dy said a number of the projects have yet to be implemented but the concessionaires have already been allowed to collect from consumers.
Among these, Dy said, is the P4.130-billion Earthquake Contingency Project, whose cost had been inputted in water bills collected since 2008; the P732-million Wawa Dam project, which had remained pending since 2003 but is already included in the 2003 rate-rebasing computation and also included in the charges imposed on users.
“On the same boat is the 300-MLD [million liters daily] Treated Bulk Water Supply Project in Laguna Lake de Bay, which has a project cost of P100 million and this was also included in the 2003 rate-rebasing project. The project has a target completion date of 2007, but it has not seen the light,” said Dy.
She also assailed the collection of projected expenses for the P5.4-billion Angat Water Reliability Project that has not yet been initiated.
The legislator assailed the MWSS for allowing the collection of the 10-percent environmental fee for sewerage and sanitation services, although only 10-percent of Metro Manila have sewerage connection.
“Front-ending is totally unacceptable. Why are we being duped to pay for services that are not yet delivered or, worse, not to be delivered at all?” said Dy.
