22-M Filipinos deprived of clean water

Senator Edgardo J. Angara on Monday said that the country’s water sector is in need of structural reforms with a view to easing the plight of around 22 million Filipinos who have no access to sanitation facilities and sewerage systems.

Angara, chairman of the Senate Committee on Science and Technology, said the figure came from a joint monitoring program between the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund released in 2008.

The longer these people are not unable to use proper toilet facilities and other waste disposal systems, the longer they get exposed to problems arising from poor sanitation, Angara said. “Our inaction in this regard comes at a very high cost.”

The World Bank estimated that the Philippines loses around $1.4 billion per year in terms of the economic cost of poor sanitation and hygiene.

The senator added that over the past 30 years, the Philippine water and sanitation industry has been highly fragmented with over 30 government agencies involved.

Currently, the setup is very inefficient with jurisdictions overlapping one another. A measure has to be passed to comprehensively restructure the way we manage our water and sanitation services, he said.

With this, Angara pushed for the passage of Senate Bill 2997 or the Water Sector Reform Act (WSRA) of 2011, which he authored.

He said this measure aims to put up a framework for efficiently managing the countrys water resources by adopting the Integrated Water Resources Management approach of the Global Water Partnership.

It also seeks to organize the country into Provincial Water Resource Zones, with certain portions structured into River Basin Clusters.

The measure also stipulates the creation of Local Water Supply and Sanitation Companies as government-owned and controlled corporations, mandated to construct, maintain and operate sanitation and sewerage systems for their corresponding PWRZs.

We crafted the bill to also enable LWSSC’s to go into PPP’s (Public-Private Partnerships) for large-scale projects, such as installing sewerage systems,” Angara explained.

“By streamlining our processes and opening the industry up to private investment, we can give more Filipinos access to improved sanitation faster. That’s why we need to urgently pass this measure.”

By John Concepcion