Gensanportal - Mindanao News Blog

Political will is all that we need if we are really serious in solving the controversial watershed problem and the perennial water crisis besetting Surigao City nowadays. This was the statement of Cong. Guillermo Romarate, Jr., second district congressional representative, during a press conference held at the Tubod Municipal Mayor’s Office recently.

The lawmaker was reacting to news reports that an overwhelming eighty percent (80 %) of the more than 16,000 households or more than a hundred thousand water consumers were dissatisfied with the way some government agencies handled the said problems. The reports pointed to the Surigao Metropolitan Water District (SMWD), DENR and the LGU as the agencies being blamed for their alleged failure to address the same.

In a press briefing attended by print and radio journalists on October 4, 2010 in Tubod town, Cong. Romarate emphasized the need of political will to solve the controversial illegal mining and illegal logging operations within the Parang-parang watershed area which resulted to the present water crisis in the city.

He defined political will as “the commitment and determination of a public official to formulate or implement public policies or laws for the benefit of the general public with any fear or favor and no matter who gets hurt.” Without the needed political will, all discussions on how to address the Parang-parang problem and the water crisis would only fall to naught, he added.

It can be recalled that Surigao City residents were recently alarmed over news reports that the cause of the perennial water shortage in the city were the illegal small scale miners who doubled up as illegal loggers or wood poachers. Aside from burrowing giant holes or tunnels which weakened the rock and soil foundation beneath the watershed area, the said violators had cut trees with impunity which they used for commercial trade, timbering of tunnels, as construction materials and as firewood. But what was feared most by the public was the miners’ use of toxic chemicals such as mercury, borax and carbon in extracting gold and other minerals because the same could possibly contaminate the city’s only source of potable water and could have drastic effect on the health condition of water consumers in the city.

In a separate exclusive interview, SMWD General Manager Benjamin R. Ensomo, Jr. told newsmen that the only thing their office could do was to monitor the activities of illegal miners and illegal loggers who were encroaching the watershed area for they had no police power to confront the problem.

Informed of Ensomo’s statement, Cong. Guillermo Romate, Jr., during the Tubod press conference, questioned the former’s inability to request for police or military assistance to stop the said illegal activities in Parang-parang.

The solon said that while he acknowledged the fact that Engr. Ensomo had no police power, he, however, reminded the water district chief of the latter’s right to request for police or military assistance.

“In the absence of police power, the most powerful is the tip of your pen to make a letter-request,” Romarate stressed.

The legislator told mediamen that if Engr. Ensomo is not really capable of managing the present water crisis, then, he would make a request with the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) for the relief of the said SMWD head.

Reliable sources revealed that the presence and operations of illegal miners-cum-illegal loggers in the Parang-parang watershed area had more than tripled during the past administration.

The syndicated rise in the said illegal activities were allegedly attributed to some politicians in the past administration who later became recipients of a 50-million peso campaign contribution from some “big-time tunnel financiers” during the recently-concluded May 2010 local election. (PP/Chief Insp Eugenio Lira, Jr.)

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