Drip... drip... drip...silence. Sounds tragic, doesn't it? This is the harsh reality of the water condition in our community, Purok 9 New Loon Mintal, Tugbok District, Davao City. Instead of water gushing out from the faucets, it seems to be dripping most of the time and it became a huge problem for the entire neighborhood. Drip, drip, drip, ordinary boring drips.
According to an oration piece entitled "The Jologs Speaks: Save Water for all Generations", water takes prominence in God's Creation as well as a gift that allows life to flow, to gush out so that humanity will genuinely live fully. As I based my reflection to on that piece, I believe that water must be accessible to all and that there should be no limitation. But what happened to us? How come that there is already a limit in consuming water? Why do residents need to store water in big containers?
This is mainly because the water supply from the reservoir of the source, which is a private association not the Davao City Water District Company, cannot accomodate all the consumers' demands at the same time in the said area. There has to be a time schedule for the water supply to reach each household and that is why the residents need to prepare large pails and basins to fetch water from the pipe and store it into the containers during designated time schedule.
As for our schedule, the water supply will start at 9am until 1pm and to have a bigger storage for water, my father made a "water tub" for it and he also bought a water pump with a preesure tank to easily generate the flow of water.
Since this is the everday condition of the water consumption in our community, there are instances in which the residents will experience having no water at all due to the malfunctioning of the water supply from the source or there is the unavailability of electricity. However, the pay for the rates will still be the same.
This kind of situation has given a negative impact on the barangay officials since this concern should be their top priority and it is their responsibility as well to fix problems within the community. Unfortunately, they were not able to take any action regarding about this matter. Because of this, people living in this area tend to struggle everyday just to fetch and store water for their daily necessities.
The possible solution which may help the community in solving this problem is that barangay officials should do the task that is expected from them. They should cooperate and be in talks with the private association involved. They must discuss about what are the possible alternatives that can benefit us as well as to make the situation better.
