SOMETIME last week we heard on a television interview the lady spokesperson of the Davao City Water District (DCWD) giving the public the assurance that the company’s bulk water supply project will be completed and operational.
She said that by then the problem of lack of potable water in certain areas of the city, more specifically the northern part of the second district, will be addressed.
That the bulk water supply project will be completed by the year mentioned by the lady spokesperson, we agree fully.
We know that the company undertaking the project is run by business organizations and people with track record of performance.
hey are known to have delivered on their previous commitments. In fact, had there been not much bureaucratic red tape in the government especially agencies charged to regulate or approve requirements to start the project it could have been completed by now and is delivering in bulk water supply to the reservoirs of the DCWD.
What we are apprehensive about is the ability of the DCWD to fast track the laying of pipe lines to the areas needing the water from its reservoirs. We know that under the partnership agreement between the DCWD and the Apo Agua Infrastructura, the company that undertakes the bulk water supply system using the surface water from Tamugan and Suwawan Rivers, the latter simply process the water in its plant and transport the same to the former’s various designated reservoirs.
It is the DCWD that will deliver the water to the various households and places of location of its consumers using its own pipelines.
In other words, being the primary water supplier of the city to its residents and establishments, bringing the water to the outlets of consumers, DCWD needs laying of several pipelines where the consumers can tap after their application for water service is approved.
How fast can the DCWD lay its pipelines could be a totally different story. We only have to be aware of the continuing almost daily hours of water interruption in most part of Catalunan Grande. This has been the “New Normal” in that part of the city starting as early as the first quarter of last year.
We should know because we are a resident of one of the subdivisions in the area. The people there have already become so used to the water service outages that when there are days that water continues to flow, some residents shout it out in a social media calling on the DCWD that it has forgotten to shut off the water service.
The sad thing about this predicament is that every time we call DCWD to inquire why the water is not coming out of the faucets, we were repeatedly told that “there are either repair or upgrading works” done on the water facilities in Tugbok.
And sometimes they claim there is power interruption in the area of the water pumps preventing the machines from pumping up the water from the underground source.
Well, it’s been one year now and the water firm still sings the same old refrain about the repair and/or upgrading works. How come that it is taking the company too long to accomplish the job?
We really do not have any idea of the reason as much as we do not know whether the project or projects are undertaken as in-house or out-sourced. What we are certain about is that the almost one year of continuing water service interruptions can only be attributed to the failure to finish the Tugbok facility repairs or upgrading projects.
Can the DCWD therefore, blame people if they have some degrees of reservation on the delivery of water to long expecting consumers in some far-flung areas in the second and third districts of the city after the bulk water supply gets inside its reservoirs?
We can only hope that the water firm will be able to find the most effective strategy to deliver on its promise.
*****************
A few days back we harped on this space the seeming lack of activities of the Davao City government as far as its preparation for the implementation of the massive vaccination program against CoViD 19. We were more concerned on the absence of some kind of simulation exercises to determine if the vaccination could be done on specific speed following a defined series of activities.
The Inter-gency Task Force that is spearheading the national efforts in the fight against the deadly virus is saying that there are parameters to follow to find out whether the vaccination can be done on a prescribed time line because the effectiveness of the vaccine is affected if not used on schedule and on specified temperature.
We were happy after it was reported in the news that the mayor has organized a group that will craft the various activities in relation to the implementation of the massive vaccination program in the city.
And it was also said that an extensive information and education campaign will be launched so the people will be aware of what the city is going to do and what they should do to get inoculated. We do not know how far has the group of retired City Health Officer Dr. Josephine Villafuerte gone on its mandate.
But so far, we are not aware of any massive information drive on what are to be done. We also do not know what medium is used in the information and education campaign, if at all it has already been started. We have also checked it out with some barangay councils and so far they have limited knowledge about the details of the mass vaccination in the city.
We hope that time will not catch up on the group of Dr. Villafuerte.
