Editorial

LWUA, Water Districts in a crucial meeting

Left virtually to their own devices by the inability (once again!) of the Congress to at least provide a sound legislative basis for sourcing funds for future water projects, officials of the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) and the country's numerous water districts meet on June 21, 2007 in their annual national consultative forum at the historic Manila Hotel.

This crucial meeting will by and large determine the direction and the pace and fate of LWUA's program in pursuit of PGMA's legacy program for water supply for the next three years at least pending action of the legislature to the agency's re-filing of the needed amendments to its charter which at this point in time is back to square one.

No less than newly-minted water czar, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Angelo T. Reyes will keynote the opening of the forum accentuating its importance and urgency in the face of the widening deficit in water supply coverage especially in the remote countryside and the determination of the Arroyo administration to close this gap notwithstanding constraints in funds and resources of the government.

To the credit of both LWUA and the water districts headed respectively by Administrator Orlando C. Hondrade and Philippine Association of Water Districts (PAWD) chairman Arturo DG Villasan and president Romeo P. Calara, they have shown willingness to put their heads and get their acts together in the interim to address the funding problem and in the longer term, make the big push in the Congress for the needed increase in LWUA's original capitalization and borrowing capacities both already used up in projects since the 90s and early 2000s yet.

Fortunately, a few local as well as international funding institutions such as United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Asian Development Bank and the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) will present options and alternatives in the development and financing of LWUA-water district projects.

Let us hope that worthwhile ideas and needed consensus come out of this crucial meeting not so much as to help fulfill PGMA's goal of water for all barangays by 2010 but to set the foundation for water supply development in the countryside in the coming more years.
c June 20 , 2007