Marcos renews push for water department

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MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has again pushed for the creation of a new government body to efficiently manage the country’s water resources for drinking and irrigation needs.

“Water is too important. Supply, our freshwater supply, is generally going down and irrigation is not as widespread as it should be,” the president was quoted on state television as saying at last week’s Legislative-Executive Advisory Council (Ledac) meeting that he might support the measure establishing the Department of Water Services.

“The problem is too large that we need to have a team of experts directing the 20 different concerned agencies under one roof to ensure that they would manage our water resources efficiently,” Marcos said.

There are pending bills in both houses of Congress for the creation of the Department of Water Resources and the Water Regulatory Commission. Some lawmakers, however, said that to save money, a commission should just be created instead of a full department.

In his State of the Nation Address in July, Marcos included the creation of the Department of Water Resources in his legislative agenda that he presented to Congress.

He said the government would also look into the “precarious” freshwater supply situation in the country, especially in urban areas. He added that many water supply systems date back to the 1950s, and they must now be rehabilitated and improved.

The new department will implement the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), which Mr. Marcos has proposed as the strategic framework for national water management, policy making, and planning.

In August, the president described the IWRM as “an approach to promote the coordinated development and management of water, land, and related resources to maximize economic and social welfare without compromising our ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, the president also discussed at the Ledac job generation, trade policy, pandemic recovery efforts, and the need to improve tourism services and infrastructure.

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