Premature rejoicing

The Bacolod City Water District labor union engaged in premature rejoicing over the withdrawal by the Maynilad from the consortium negotiation to take over the management of BACIWA’s natural water resource losses and to upgrade the agency’s infrastructure.

Unfortunately, what actually happened was that Maynilad was just one of the two which composed the consortium that negotiated the takeover of the water agency’s management of the water losses and the restoration of its infrastructure system.

Maynilad President Victorico Vargas had written on July 5 a letter to Miya-Maynilad director Mai Flor that it was withdrawing from their partnership agreement to undertake a non-revenue management and expansion project for BACIWA.

A lot of confusion seemed to have been generated by the term Miya-Maynilad. It is not one company but a consortium and the withdrawal of Maynilad leaves Miya as the lone company to carry on the negotiation with the BACIWA.

Neither did it mean that the negotiation with BACIWA had threatened the livelihood of the water agency’s thousands of workers.

Miya, incidentally, is an international corporate entity that has employed its expertIse in 150 similar projects around the world, including several in developing countries like Brazil and in South Africa.

In short, it is an Arizon Investments firm established in 2007 and operates globally.

One of its major objectives is to reduce the financial risk of BACIWA to minimum, hence the agency will not need to borrow money to finance the project.

BEU president Claudio Salmo said the withdrawal by Maynilad was a victory for all concessionaires of the district, having freed them from potential bankruptcy and high cost of water.

It seems something was wrong with his perception that Miya cannot anymore undertake the project alone because it is an Israeli company.

In short, it is evident from that statement that he nor management officials appear to have fully understood what Miya and Maynilad are.

That the two firms were actually two entities that combined their resources to come up with the “solicited proposal” for the government to consider.

In short, the proposal simply means that the initiative for the concept comes from the private sector and not initiated by government invitation.

The project envisions a five-year loss reduction and network expansion with a 10-year monitoring, maintenance, training, and knowledge transfer.

The total cost of the NRW project is P3-billion for 15 years. Miya’s investment finances the project for the first years while project cash flow is still negative. And, the project is not a concession. BACIWA continues to operate the distribution systems with pipes and meters owned by it.

Unfortunately, because of misunderstanding, Saturday’s dialog ended up as a monologue with only members of the BACIWA board and Miya present to explain to the media what the project is all about.

Elsie Esperacion, a former president of the press club, said that the forum could have served as an enlightening experience for most of those invited could have provided the opportunity for an exchange of views between the advocates and the oppositors.*

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