Noy’s handpicked execs resume MWSS anomalies

EMPLOYEES CHARGE CIRCUMVENTION OF NEW GOCC LAW

Like paved roads that did not take long to be pockmarked with holes after the incessant rains, President Aquino’s straight path mantra had proven to be all hype as employees of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) charged yesterday that appointees of Aquino had continued with the irregular practices at the state water agency that Aquino had personally exposed and denounced.

MWSS employees, in a statement, said Aquino’s appointees in the MWSS board headed by MWSS chairman Ramon Alikpala, while fixing a per diem compensation at P14,500 each to comply with the new Government Owned and Controlled Corporation (GOCC) law, the MWSS directors have been circumventing the law by scheduling four meetings a day enabling them to collect P58,000 in allowances for a single day of meetings.

MWSS Labor Association president Nap Quiñones said that despite Aquino’s directive during his first Sona (State of the Nation Address) deploring rampant irregularities at the water agency, the new set of officials with their 436 consultants don’t follow what the new GOCC law requires.

Quiñones, an employee of MWSS for 28 years, said consultants would also hold meetings four times a day, four times a month to earn P136,000 a month on an honorarium of P8,500 per meeting.

The new GOCC law allows a maximum of four meetings a month, plus one emergency meeting, he said. In his first Sona in 2010, Aquino cited the excesses at the MWSS as a key example of what he was claiming as the crooked past referring to the term of former President Gloria Arroyo, who has been charged in several cases of improprieties aside from poll fraud.

Aquino in his Sona said he discovered several anomalies in the MWSS including the hefty bonuses of its top officials, adding that, in 2009, the MWSS payroll totaled P51.4 million plus additional allowances and benefits amounting to P160.1 million, or a total of P211.5 million.

He denounced the agency’s board of trustees who he said received hefty allowances and bonuses.

“We were thinking all along that the days of exorbitant compensation for GOCC officials were over in MWSS,” the MWSS employees said in a statement.

The employees also noted the misplaced hiring of 40 consultants and ante-dating of their appointment papers thereby entitling them to be paid P300,000 each. The statement also claimed that there were possible ghost consultants who were budgeted by the administration.

The employees said that while the MWSS board feasted on their excessive allowances, per diem and other perks, meal allowances of employees were slashed to a mere P3 a day from the previous P150 per day.

They also denounced very strongly the continuing conspiracies and collussion within the MWSS water rate setting regulation and approval stystem where advanced collection, over-billing and abuses were disadvantageous to the water consumers.

They cited the decision of the old board to put in escrow and eventually to refund the proven advanced collections by Maynilad and Manila Water for Laiban Dam and 15CMS Angat Dam Irrigation Water Replacement.

However, according to the employees, this was reversed by the new MWSS management “to the detriment of the water consuming public which for whatever reason, we ourselves from MWSS are puzzled.”

MWSS human resources and records management division manager Laurelynn delos Santos also said at a recent forum that the Department of Budget and Management had set a per diem of P500 per meeting, but the MWSS board members are getting paid more than 10 times the amount.

“They meet more than once a day, however, so such per diem is multiplied by the number of meetings they had,” she noted. She pointed out per diems should be given on a per day basis only. The employees also reported MWSS board members receive gasoline allowance for their private vehicles. “That shouldn’t be done,” said delos Santos.

Quinones likewise alleged the agency duplicated the work of its regular employees by hiring 36 consultants.

“The agency also hired 162 forest workers for Ipo watershed’s reforestation — we’re not opposing greening but think the process of hiring them was illegal as their resumes haven’t even been submitted to the Human Resources office,” he said during the forum.

Delos Santos alleged that the consultants MWSS hired last October claimed a monthly salary of P50,000 each.

“They also claimed salaries retroactive to March,” she noted.

The association’s Rene Zapiter likewise raised concerns about such hiring, noting MWSS had released payment to its consultants even without Malacanang’s approval.

“We’re awaiting developments on the complaint we filed before Office of the Ombudsman on June 10 this year regarding MWSS’ illegal hiring of consultants,” he said during the forum. Delos Santos reported MWSS employees were stripped of several benefits government earlier approved for them. Such benefits include their rice and meal allowances, she said.

“MWSS reduced our meal allowance to P3 a day and we can hardly buy any food with that amount,” she noted.

Employees of MWSS can live with such reality but won’t tolerate BOT’s fund misuse, she said.
A handwritten report for Water for All Refund Movement (WARM) president Rodolfo Javellana Jr. also showed the per diem of MWSS board members “not only were/are unauthorized, they were paid out of the P6 billion advance collections from consumers.”

He maintained that the MWSS must reimburse such advance payments from customers of its private concessionaires Maynilad Water Services Inc. and Manila Water Company Inc. since water projects to be funded from that collection didn’t push through.

The projects involve Angat Dam irrigation water replacement and construction of Laiban Dam. “We’re asking MWSS to return the advance payments we made — that’s our money,” he said. Javellana said WARM continued probing charges levied on the two concessionaires’ customers to determine how much more advance payments must be returned to them. –Daily Tribune