Water use missing in platforms of presidential bets, solon says

CLARK FREEPORT—-Water for drinking and for irrigation has not been included in the platforms of any of the top five presidential candidates in the May 9 elections, Sen. Ralph Recto said here on Thursday, so he urged the Philippine Association of Water Districts (PWAD) to make water an election issue.

In his speech at PWAD’s 37th national convention here, Recto said there was an “ongoing intellectual drought in water discussion” among those seeking to succeed President Aquino.

“If weather forecasters have warned us that a dry spell is on the horizon, I wonder why this issue has not been captured by the political radars of presidentiables,” he said.

No program

“They have a sound bite for every issue, but no sound program for the most important—water,” he said.

Recto said candidates seemed oblivious to what he called a torrent of water-related news concerning the dry spell, the declarations of state of calamity in provinces and towns, a decline in rice production, and water rationing plans in Metro Manila.

He said water and sanitation should be campaign issues because a report of the Unicef-World Health Organization said 8.4 million Filipinos have no access to clean drinking water while 7.5 million others have no toilets.

Presidential candidates, he said, encounter these realities in their sorties. “On the campaign trail, they meet people whose demand is very basic but many of us take for granted: clean, piped-in water. You should join in their chorus, too. And you have a powerful voice which can be heard and heeded,” Recto said, noting PWAD’s 20 million consumers in 514 towns and cities.

He said: “[The] elections, like the water business, should be demand-driven. It is not enough that applicants for the highest office in the land should just supply us with what they intend to do with the mandate they want us to give them.”

He said PAWD members must “catapult the issue of water on the top of their platform and front and center of the presidential debate.”

Pressing need

Recto said an additional 1.76 million population would need 115 billion liters of water yearly and another 208 billion liters to grow 208 million kilograms of rice yearly.

“The challenges are so great that these cannot be addressed by dispersed agencies with different mandates. It should be coordinated by a single office, preferably a full-fledged department whose head must hold a Cabinet rank,” he said.

Recto said the next administration should consider creating a Department of Water and Sanitation, to supervise the National Irrigation Administration, the Local Water Utilities Administration, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, and the National Water Resources Board. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon