The 20th City Council will convene reportedly sometime next week as a ‘committee of the whole’ to conduct a hearing on the management dispute at the Cagayan de Oro Water District (COWD).

 

This move was contained in one of four resolutions dealing with the issue that was passed by the council during Monday’s regular afternoon session. The resolutions pushed by Council Majority Floor Leader Edgar Cabanlas and Councilor James Judith II centered on the extension of appointment by the COWD interim board and officials by the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA).

 

In his special report on the issue, Cabanlas questioned LWUA’s extension of appointment of the interim board and officials by six more months despite serving for more than one year. ‘They were given (by LWUA) six months to solve (whatever problems they claimed were going inside COWD)..after six months nothing happened and they were given another six months,’ he said.

 

As a result, Cabanlas said the LWUA is ‘undermining the authority’ of Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Rolando ‘Klarex’ Uy and the regular board appointed by the mayor to head the COWD. The council later voted 11-4 in favor of a resolution condemning ‘LWUA for grave abuse of authority by instigating confusion and controversy over the management’ of the COWD.

 

The council also passed resolutions asking the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) to intervene in the COWD management dispute and requesting the court to expedite the resolution of the dispute between LWUA and the COWD regular board and officials./Text by Stephen Capillas with CIO file photo