MANILA — An inter-agency team will be formed before the end of the year to come up with a revised version of a water concession agreement, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Monday.
“We are still forming our team. We’ll come up with a government version of the concession agreement. So we’ll hopefully come up with a revised version of the water concession agreement that does not include the onerous and what is considered illegal provisions. Hopefully, before the year is over we can have one,” Guevarra said to reporters at the sidelines of the Sikhay Laban sa Korupsyon event at the Diamond Hotel in Manila.
Guevarra said the review panel will not yet include representatives from the private concessionaires Maynilad and Manila Water but will draft an agreement that is “less unfair to the government to be presented to the concessionaires.
“We’ll do it within the government first. Once we are ready with our own version of what a good water concession agreement should be that’s the time, we will sit down with the water concessionaires (team). This will be a composite team of both lawyers from the Office of the Solicitor General, Office of the Government Corporate Counsel, Department of Finance and the (Department of Justice) of course,” Guevarra said.
The DOJ chief expressed hopes that the present agreement is still salvageable minus the disagreeable provisions.
“Ang mas mahalaga kasi (What is more important) is not how to deal with their decision but what is more important is how we deal with the concession agreement itself,” Guevarra said, referring to the arbitration tribunal in Singapore’s ruling on the cases initiated by the water concessionaires against the Philippine government.
“May decision na (There is a decision) but it doesn’t mean it can be enforced at any given time because the Philippine government is ready to oppose any enforcement of the arbitral ruling,” he added.
Guevarra said the government may opt to take over in the event of a water supply stoppage.
“If that’s the case (water supply stoppage) then the government will have to take over if necessary. We’ll have to deal with that if it comes but I don’t think we’ll get to that point when water supply in Metro Manila will be stopped simply because of this problem. This is a problem that can be solved. I don’t have any reason to believe that we should be worried (about) stoppage of water supply,” he said.
He added that until the government is ready to efficiently run the distribution business, it will have to rely on private concessionaires for the distribution of water supply.