Water firms’ backdown should not stop full review of onerous contracts

IT makes good sense, for reasons of sheer self-preservation if nothing else, that the water concessionaires Manila Water Co. Inc. and Maynilad Water Services Inc. have decided to back down from implementing the ruling of two Singapore arbitral panels that award them billions more in profits to collect. But this tactical retreat should not stop the government from fully bringing out into the open all that is onerous, ruinous, anomalous and irregular in the water concession agreements between the Metropolitan Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and Manila Water and Maynilad.

The genie is out of the bottle or the cat is out of the bag — something is rotten with the water concession agreements concluded in 1997 during the time of President Fidel V. Ramos. The 12 million hapless users of water services in Metro Manila know it. The nation knows it. The government from top to bottom knows it now.