THE board of the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) has extended its temporary assumption of the Cagayan de Oro Water District (COWD), interim manager Fermin Jarales announced November 28.
On this day, their six-month intervention would have ended but LWUA has granted an extension, citing the enormous work of the interim management ahead.
Jarales presented to the media his five-year development plan for COWD, which was also the basis for LWUA’s grant of extension.
COWD’s work is now focused on several fronts: to drastically reduce leaks that are the key reason for its exceedingly high non-revenue output; to look for sound financial sources; to settle the ballooning debt with its bulk water supplier; and to recoup money lost over the years.
Jarales did not mince words to describe how COWD was run in the past decade.
“The audit findings found mismanagement, incompetence and gross negligence in the organization,” he said, referring to two separate processes conducted by the Commission on Audit (COA) and the interim management immediately upon Jarales’ assumption last July.
For instance, the audits yielded that COWD failed to collect P987,067.31 from its delinquent consumers the past 40 years.
Starting tomorrow, Jarales has dispatched a team to initiate what he calls as a strategic accounts collection drive.
But the bulk of the immediate concerns are two-fold: to reduce non-revenue water to the acceptable level of 25 percent; and to settle its P500-million debt with Cagayan de Oro Bulk Water, Inc. (COBI).
For the latter, Jarales revealed that the two entities had already computed an undisputed amount on how the debt is settled on a staggard basis – an amount that would not directly affect the consumers.
For the first concern, Jarales proposed several schemes on achieving financial stability of COWD: capital expenditure bailout, loans, performance-based partnership and government bonds.
Under the bailout strategy, Cagayan de Oro City first district Rep. Lordan Suan has already successfully lobbied for a P150-million portion of the 2025 national budget to be used to alleviate non-revenue water.
With that, Jarales is looking forward collaborating with more stakeholders to achieve their holistic goal of a water-secure Cagayan de Oro.
“I would like to think that this is an opportunity for us that we can do something. Somebody said that what we are doing is ambitious. But because of plans well crafted, because of clear leadership, we can get this done,” he said.
