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CEBU CITY, Philippines – Another judge will handle the contempt case filed by Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia against Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña over who has the power to appoint members to the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) board of directors.
Case records were transferred on Monday to the court of Judge Bienvenido Saniel of branch 20 after Executive Judge Fortunato de Gracia Jr. approved it.
Branch 20 is handling another civil case for declaratory relief that the governor earlier filed against the mayor. The transfer would allow both cases to be “jointly heard with the principal action,” said Judge Simeon Dumdum Jr. in his April 10 order.
Governor Garcia filed the contempt case against Mayor Osmeña and other members of the MCWD board last March 27 after the mayor appointed Joel Mari Yu as a member of the MCWD board of directors.
Garcia objected because the case for declaratory relief was still pending. The Capitol flied the case for declaratory relief to settle once and for all who has the power to appoint MCWD board members.
The governor insists she, not the mayor, has the authority based on a provision of the Provincial Water Utilities Act of 1973 that the governor has the power if no single local government unit in the area served by the water distributor has 75 percent of the distributor’s customers.
Garcia insists this level was already reached based on records showed by MCWD as of August 26, 2006.
The other board members named in the indirect contempt case are board chairman Juan Saul Montecillo, vice chairman Joy Augustus Young, and board members Eligio Pacana and Cynthia Barrit.
At the City Hall on Monday, Osmeña urged MCWD managers to be more transparent with their operations.
He described MCWD’s efforts at finding new water sources as “lousy” while the management blamed local government units for not cooperating.
He said this was why he appointed Yu to the board in the first place – to crack down on management.
Osmeña said MCWD should focus on distributing water to places that do not have water connections rather than concentrating on distributing water to big companies.
MCWD public affairs manager Terry Andaya said managers have been transparent especially in purchases and contract biddings because operations are computerized.
“If we do not have good management, we would not have been given an ISO award,” Andaya said.
ISO 9001:2000 certification was recently issued to the water distributor by the International Standardization Organization (ISO).
“Maybe he (Osmeña) has only seen some portions of the whole picture, but he is entitled to his comments,” Andaya said. /With a report by Correspondent Marian Christie Z. Codilla
