Waterless Manila residents coping

Residents of San Andres, Manila, take a bath as water spills from a fire truck going around “dry” areas. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

As Maynilad started cutting off the water supply to selected areas in Metro Manila on Monday, affected residents find themselves looking for ways to stretch their meager stocks.

For Zyda de los Santos, an eatery owner in Ermita, Manila, it means serving food on disposable paper plates to her 100 or so customers for the next three days. She has also closed the establishment’s restroom to save on water which would otherwise be used for flushing.

De los Santos, who also owns a boarding house at the second floor of the eatery, told the Inquirer that she had asked her five female boarders to go home for the duration of the water service interruption. “They understood the situation and obliged. Anyway, they’re from nearby cities,” she added.

Maynilad said the rotating water service interruption was necessary to give way to the realignment of a water pipe located in the path of the Department of Public Works and Highways’ interceptor drainage project on Blumentritt Street in Manila. Affecting parts of Metro Manila and Cavite province, it will last until Aug. 13 and between Aug. 17 and 18.

Another resident in Manila, Rosario Rodriguez, said that her family has also resorted to using disposable plates so that no water would be wasted on washing the dishes. Her family of 10 is also considering buying bottles of mineral water for their consumption so that the water they collected in four large containers would be used exclusively for bathing. Rodriguez lamented that she could have collected more water if the service interruption did not start at noon yesterday, or an hour earlier than expected.

Manila Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office head Johnny Yu, meanwhile, said that the local government has on standby 50 tankers to provide water to the city’s 374 affected barangays (villages). Each tanker has 10,000 liters of water, enough for around 100,000 families, he added.