“No other report indicts our skewed progress than this. No other data portrays the lack of inclusive growth than this one,” said Sen. Ralph Recto in his speech during the 37th annual convention of the Philippine Association of Water Districts (PAWD) here Thursday.
Recto said such information was hardly noticed in a recent joint report card of the UNICEF-World Health Organization on the state of water and sanitation in the Philippines, as they were in fine print in the report.
“The report’s summary that 7.5 million Filipinos have no toilets, while 8.4 million have no access to clean drinking water, may not jolt us, couched as they are in cold prose, but what’s disturbing are buried in its fine print,” he said.
He referred to statistics that 7.1 million Filipinos resort to “open defecation” while 570,000 more use “unimproved sanitation facilities” like buckets and open-pit latrines.
“For drinking, 2.3 million Filipinos use untreated ‘surface water’ of rivers, dams, and canals. In addition, 6.1 million Filipinos source their drinking water from ‘unimproved drinking water sources’ like unprotected dug wells and unprotected springs,” he said.
Recto lamented that “in this age of smart phones with flash drives, there are millions without flush toilets.”
“This reality is not found on reports alone. Presidentiables encounter them on their sorties around the country,” he noted, even as he challenged presidential candidates to address this issue, including those that concern water supply for Filipinos.
He noted that “election, like the water business, should be demand-driven.”
“It is not enough that applicants for the highest office in the land should just supply us with what they intend to do with the mandate they want us to give them,” he said.
This, even as Rector urged candidates and government leaders to focus more on water and its potential problems arising from El Nino phenomenon.
“If PAGASA forecasters have warned us that a dry spell is on the horizon, I wonder why this issue has not been captured by the political radars of presidentiables,” he said.
He noted that presidential aspirants “have a sound bite for every issue, but no sound program for the most important – water.”
“Daily, provinces have been reporting about the ravages of the dry spell. Dams have dried up, and crops are failing. In one province, it must have been so hot that even rats have come out of their cool hiding dens,” he lamented.
Recto warned that “it is not just farming towns which are getting parched; Metro Manila may soon too,” adding that “
NCR’s two water concessionaires have grown hoarse warning their customers that supply will be tight this summer, and to brace for possible rationing.”
This, as he challenged water district nationwide to face the water crisis.
“You are present in 514 towns and cities. It is a grassroots network that is wider than the country’s biggest bank,” he said.
