Water Crisis and the Blame Game
July 27, 2010
Water concessionaires say that the long dry spells that we have had causes the inadequacy of water supply from the Angat Dam, which, in turn, causes our water shortage in Manila.
Angat Dam representatives declared that the National Power Corporation is at fault, specifically because it mismanaged the Angat Dam reservoir. They further pointed out that the Napocor team that takes charge of the reservoir is understaffed (read this: very inefficient).
On its part, the Napocor blames the people for abusing our natural resources, which contributed to water shortage.
For those of us who study international systems and the governments of third world countries, the blame game that these sectors are playing depict a classic picture of an intrastate waterdispute.
Why Water was Made Private
Water is a universal right; it necessary to sustain human life and thus, it is inherent to all of us. In 1997, the government chose to shrink away from its responsibility of providing basic water services to its people for the pursuit of a better allocation of funds. Yes, this privatization of water resources came up because we had to allocate it to debt servicing. Since we have debts from the World Bank and the IMF (like you wouldn’t imagine), the government decided to privatize water, instead. Aside from immediately materializing to monetary resources, water privatization also saved the government from the added burden of paying for the maintenance of the country’s water supply.
The thing with this arrangement, though, is that the purpose of privatizing water resources has gone to the dogs precisely because the appropriation of funds was merely distributed to the pockets of the corrupt.
Now what?
Now, as you can see, we have citizens from Malabon and Novaliches who are fighting the odds because they have had this water shortage for over a week now. We have fires in that couldn’t be put out because even the firemen had no adequate supply of water. Residents in Manila were told that their water supply is continuously going down. The price of water is skyrocketing and the service we are being provided with is as poor as ever, yet the government is hands-off on this issue because the ownership of water is no longer in its hands.
The stark realities are there. It is written clearly, in black and white. And no matter how we try, we cannot ignore this issue. You guys, you people in power, shouldn’t, too.
