NO NEED FOR EMERGENCY POWERS

Government departments and agencies must first get their acts together before even contemplating on asking for such authority from Congress Senator Ramon Bong Revilla Jr. yesterday said.

"Are we for instance now getting the signal that the drought situation will impact more on energy rather than agriculture?" asked Revilla.

Revilla instead batted for the creation of a "Task Force Tubig" that will get the entire government machinery "speak with one voice and take swift and decisive actions to stem the crisis."

During the first El Nino crisis in 1997, then President Fidel Ramos created as similar task force which was reactivated by President Macapagal Arroyo in 2001.

For his part, Revilla said he intends to sponsor the creation of a larger and more powerful agency on water resources as recommended by the Ramos task force.

"We need a full-time body to deal only with the issue of water," Revilla said.

During the 10th Congress, the elder Senator Ramon Revilla Sr. almost succeeded in having passed a law creating the Water Resources Authority of the Philippines (WRAP) as the overall regulatory body for water resources development and management.

"Despite being normally abundant in rains, we have an endemic water crisis in many parts of the country," the senator clarified.

He said that water from rainfall practically spills back into the sea because the country does not have sufficient catch basins to hold water for the dry season.

"What we have are large multi-purpose dams prioritized for power generation. For agriculture and other uses, we need smaller basins more evenly and strategically spread like they do in China ," Revilla explained.

Revilla also pointed out that in places like Metro Manila and Cebu City , water beds has been over extracted leading to fresh water scarcity in these areas.

"The idea of putting a price or tax on water extraction becomes very attractive with the knowledge that big companies pump out freshwater as if the sources are infinite," said the senator. In the end it is the poor who are victimized by the rising cost of scarce water, Revilla added. "The poor knows the value of water more because they pay for rationed water more dearly than companies who extract free water unabated."

The senator recalled that the first task force on drought, the Presidential Task Force on Water Resources Development and Management (PTFWRDM) was created by FVR in October 1996, by virtue of Executive Order No. 374. A similar multi- agency task force, the Task Force El Niño, was created in May 18, 2001 through Presidential Executive Order No. 16 dated May 18, 2001.