The entire Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and its administrator Orlando Hondrade should resign en masse for consistently compromising the public interest with their mishandling of the case against Maynilad Water Services Inc.

After a bitter experience with Benpres and French company Suez, we do not see the rationale behind the rush to reprivatize Maynilad Water Services Inc., a step that will begin on Monday’s annual shareholders’ meeting of the company.

An ordinary costumer of the Maynilad Water Services Inc. will start paying next week as much as P55.8 more per month due to a rate hike approved by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS). For many of its clients in the west zone of Metro Manila, the increase is deplorable because of the rising cost of living and worse, the rate hike is not even meant to improve the dismal service of Maynilad but to make its planned reprivatization more attractive to potential buyers.

The rate hikes recently approved by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) for its two private concessionaires were just the opening salvo of yet another round of increases in water charges for Metro Manila.

Neoliberal economic globalization has been increasingly redefining the traditional concept of water as a common resource. Behind the guise of conservation, the policy direction in a growing number of countries worldwide, with tremendous pressure from international creditors led by the World Bank and multilateral bodies like the World Water Council (WWC) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), is to apply free market principles on how to manage and utilize water.