THE House of Representatives yesterday approved on third and final reading the legislative franchises of Manila Water Company Inc. (MWCI) and Maynilad Water Services Inc. (Maynilad) amid allegations of railroading.
Congressmen voted 206-7 with no abstention on House Bills Nos. 9422 and 9433 granting a 25-year franchise to establish, operate and maintain waterworks and sewerage system for commercial purposes to Maynilad Water Services and Manila Water Company, respectively.
The franchises were granted following the Malacañang-led revision of their previous concession agreements, which now no longer treat Manila Water and Maynilad as mere agents and contractors of the Metropolitan Waterworks Sewerage System (MWSS) but as public utilities which require congressional franchises.
Manila Water will continue to serve Metro Manila’s east zone, including Rizal, while Maynilad will remain covering the west zone.
Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Carlos Zarate, who was among the Makabayan bloc members who voted against the measure, said the House acted like a “rubberstamp” for railroading the passage of the twin measures and denying some lawmakers the opportunity to scrutinize its provisions which he said also happened in the committee level.
Zarate said that during the deliberations in the House committee on legislative franchises chaired by Palawan Rep. Franz Alvarez, a promise was made that further deliberations will continue in the plenary.
However, he said the measure was voted upon immediately in the plenary on June 1 without questions or clarifications about the revised concession agreements entered into between the two corporations and the government.
Zarate claimed that consumers were not consulted about the new franchises and even the Metropolitan Waterworks Sewerage System (MWSS) had pointed out some issues.
“The consumers who should be protected by the government were not consulted,” he said.
Deputy speaker Lito Atienza questioned where “democratic process” went in the approval of the franchises, saying the hard issues were not thorughly discussed from the committee to the plenary.
The concession agreements were revised after President Duterte threatened to scrap it in 2019 in an effort to protect public interest. The revised version now continues the concession of the two water firms until July 31, 2037.
In December 2019, MWCI and Maynilad Water decided to forgo its arbitral win against the Philippine government which was being ordered to pay a total of P11 billion by the Singapore-based Permanent Court of Arbitration for the losses that the water concessionaires incurred after they were denied rate increases.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration’s (PCA) in Singapore recently ruled that the Philippine government has to pay Manila Water P7.39 billion for the company’s losses from June 1, 2015 to November 22, 2019 as a result of the arbitration that Manila Water filed in 2015.
The case was filed after the government refused the demand to pay P79 billion from 2015 to 2017 for lost revenues after the concessionaire it was barred from raising tariffs. This is on top of the amounts that Manila Water paid to the PCA and 85 percent of other claimed costs.
