Manila Water Company: Manila Water inaugurates more projects for poor communities in Rizal

Manila Water inaugurates more projects for poor communities in Rizal

Posted: Tuesday April 29, 2008

Manila Water Company, water and wastewater service provider of the East Zone recently inaugurated more projects in Rizal as it continuously pushes its way into the still unserved areas of the province.

The poor communities of Salvador Compound in San Isidro and the Pag-asa Compound in San Mateo, both in Rizal, recently benefited from Manila Water’s Tubig Para Sa Barangay (TPSB) project, a pro-poor program being co-financed by the World Bank through the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid (GPOBA). As part of the over-all package, fire hydrants were also installed in the said communities composed of about 500 families to provide protection against fire especially during the hot summer months.

The Tubig Para Sa Barangay program has already benefited more than 1.5 million customers since its inception in 1998. Because of the success of the program in uplifting the lives of the urban poor, this was chosen as a vehicle for the poverty alleviation campaign by the World Bank in 2007 through GPOBA, a multi-donor campaign fund being administered by the Bank.

Congresswoman Deline Rodriguez and Mayor Pedro Cuerpo attended the inauguration of Salvador and Pagasa compounds, respectively, as a gesture of appreciation.

At Sto. Nino Elementary School in Barangay Sto. Nino, Marikina, drinking fountains were also installed as part of Manila Water Company’s Lingap Eskwela program to the delight of students, employees and faculty members numbering to about 3,200. “Because of Lingap Eskwela, our students, teachers and non-teaching personnel are now assured of clean drinking water”, according to Mr. Augusto Mendoza, School Principal.

TPSB and Lingap Eskwela are only two (2) of the several ways by which Manila Water is implementing its various sustainable development programs in keeping with its objective of aligning its social responsibilities with its corporate goals.

The Manila Water Company has earmarked a total of P7 Billion to finance its projects for this year alone. For the remaining 15 years of its 25-year concession, a total of 187 billion pesos in investment was committed by the Company to ensure attainment of its goals which are anchored on making services more reliable for the existing customers while expanding its services to the still unserved areas within the East Zone.