Thank you Councilor Jerry Yaokasin!

Taclobanons I have met recently have no other reaction but praise and thank highly urbanized city councilor Jerry Yaokasin when he made a stand on a possible intervention of the Sangguniang Panlunsod over the rift between the city government of Mayor Alfred Romualdez and the Leyte Metropolitan Water District (LMWD) which has slowed down the water pipeline expansion project because of the mayor’s non-issuance of a permit to improve water delivery operations to better serve Tacloban water consumers.

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Water is a basic necessity of man. To deny Taclobanons this need by city officials defies the logic of sincere, dedicated and real public service for humane concern. Of course, water flows albeit poor but in many residences it does only when almost everyone who still get privilege to see their taps flowing early are already in dreamland. This writer has drastically changed his sleeping habits. Where before this crisis molested Taclobanons, I sleep at ten in the evening after tv viewing but now if I am not traveling I sleep at 9 in the evening and wake up between 1:30-2 o’clock in the morning because that’s the time water flows in my tap and the only time I fill up containers to be used during the day.

I usually go back to bed at 3 or 4 in the morning.

Certainly, I am not alone in this unhappy living in the highly urbanized city of Tacloban. Others shared with me this experience.

It’s a blessing to travel outside of Tacloban because it is in the towns of the province of Leyte that I get a much-desired shower-bath.

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Some few years back, the LMWD manager was the whipping boy of pro-Romualdez media spokesmen because of this problem. Water district manager Ganggang Villasin, however, did not deny the problem, accepted it as real even if these faults could be shared by previous officials of the water district of their failure to foresee the impending problem that would ensue with the increase of population and proliferation of business activities in the city in the future – which is now. He faced the problem squarely and in cooperation’s with the board of directors, they sought a loan to solve the problem to eventually provide Tacloban all the water it would need.

Now we see large water pipes being set up along the highways leading to Tacloban. It is unfortunate that, according to GM Villasin, the city mayor is giving the project a hard time to approve its entry into the city of which we are not completely aware of, why.

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Now, Councilor Yaokasin has spoken and we hope others in the city council support him. This is a project that will benefit in a large measure their constituents and we see no reason why they will not support this move to intervene. The councilors will prove to one and all that indeed they represent the interest the “thirst”- suffering Taclobanon if they support the intervention approach. I am confident that Vice Mayor Arvin Antoni will include the Yaokasin move one of the agenda in their regular sessions. And may God bless us all- primarily with adequate water taps in our homes in this highly urbanized city of Tacloban.

By: Alvin Gz. Arpon

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