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Thursday, October 31, 2024
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COWD: The Tipping Point

Cagayan de Oro —The continuing hullabaloo over the water woes of this emerging metropolis of the South has reached its tipping point such that, come May 2025 mid-term election, this issue, like it or not, shall become a political nightmare of those presently occupying the City Hall.

By now, those eyeing to take the baton of City Hall are in high spirits, watching closely the unfolding events surrounding Cagayan de Oro Water District’s water dilemma as it struggle facing-off legal action from all fronts.

The latest of which was its course of action seeking the opinion of the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel regarding the decision of the board of trustees of the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) for the regulator to take over the water district.

The LWUA board’s decision came after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the water district regulator to study the possibility of taking over COWD amid a water crisis in Cagayan de Oro resulting from its ongoing debt dispute with its supplier, the Manny V. Pangilinan-controlled Cagayan de Oro Bulk Water Incorporated (COBI).

LWUA has directed COWD to submit documents as the regulatory body looks into the utility’s current financial state.

The LWUA directive came after a Manila-based group, United Filipino Consumers and Commuters (UFCC), expressed concerns about the impending water crisis in Cagayan de Oro as a result of a debt dispute between the COWD and its primary bulk supplier of treated water, Cagayan de Oro Bulk Water Incorporated (COBI).

As the affected Cagay-anons struggle to survive the long-running water lack, this question keeps ringing, reverberating over the city’s skyline, now heavily agog with infra developments: when art thou this water crisis shall come to an end?

Thanks but no thanks to the highly political, bureaucratic kind of governance of running water system in this emerging metropolis that is Cagayan de Oro, long-touted as the City of Golden Friendship — indeed, a city where ‘friendship’ starts and ends at the very core of the City Hall. Sigh.

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