By Sheendy Olivares and Princess Lacorte/ADdU interns
THE DAVAO City Water District (DCWD) claimed it had already resolved service issues in several areas in District 1 during the regular session on Tuesday, May 2.
Last week, Councilor Louie John Bonguyan summoned the DCWD to address the reports of worsening water supply after receiving multiple complaints from residents.
Halfway through the session, a motion to suspend the rules was granted to give way for the DCWD to give its report on the water service interruptions that have occurred for the past two weeks.
The areas mostly affected by these interruptions were under District 1, namely Bago Gallera, Bago Aplaya, Talomo, Ulas, and Puan – all of which are areas served by Tugbok Subsystem A.
Jovana Duhaylungsod, DCWD spokesperson, cleared up issues that led to the emergency interruption of one of the two production wells. Due to the downtime, they could only operate at half their capacity beginning on April 16.
She said they implemented mitigating measures to minimize the inconvenience to their customers. One of these interventions was to deliver water to the affected areas with the help of barangay volunteers.
“Although we were able to restore water service to all of the affected areas, those situated in elevated locations and at the endpoint of the distribution network have limited hours of water supply availability between 10 p.m. po to 6 a.m,” Duhaylungsod said.
On April 26, voltage problems in the water supply caused both production wells to be inoperable. But the Tugbok Subsystem A was back online the following day at 2:40 p.m., nine days after the start of downtime.
Within 24 hours, normal water service was restored in all affected areas.
Duhaylungsod further claims that no complaints were raised again for the Tugbok Subsystem A since water service was restored.
