REAL, Quezon—The municipal government here has put a huge stake on a modernized P228.9-million water-supply system project that would benefit more than half of this town’s over 35,000 population living in five barangays of the town’s poblacion.
“This water-system project has long been overdue in our town, since our water system has been destroyed by calamity way back in November 2004. The project has been in the pipeline since the administration of my father sometime in 2009,” Mayor Diana Abigail Diestro-Aquino said after the Sangguniang Panglalawigan (SP) of Quezon approved on September 25 the municipal loan ordinance authorizing the mayor to contract a P206- million loan with the Development Bank of the Philippines.
Earlier, Diestro-Aquino and several municipal government officials of Real, including members of the Sangguniang Bayan (SB) led by her father, ex-Mayor and now Vice Mayor and SB presiding officer Joel Amando Diestro, attended a joint SP committee hearing led by board member Ferdinand Talabong, which resulted to the approval of the first ever huge bank loan of the town.
The first-term mayor, formerly a provincial board member from 2002 to 2007 representing the province’s youth as the Sangguniang Kabataan provincial federation president, said the municipal government, as certified by the Bureau of Local Government Finance of the Department of Finance, has a loan capacity of up to P290,354,000 and an annual paying capacity of P29.9 million.
The town’s Internal Revenue Allotment for this year is P155,387,949, and its 20-percent development fund is over
P31 million.
Diestro said the town’s water-supply system project, which has a total cost of P228,965,000, would mean direct connection of pipelines to houses in barangays Poblacion 1, Poblacion 61, Ungos, Cawayan and Kiloloron, new water treatment, new ground reservoir to insure supply of clean water 24/7 even during dry season, new transmission and distribution pipelines to insure passage of treated water and installation of new water meter.
The complete and total breakdown cost of the project: feasibility study, P11 million; basic construction, P206,158,231.96; construction and supervision, P6,806,768.04; and land acquisition, P5 million.
The new water system would have a water-supply capacity of up to 63,676 cubic meter daily, and the water consumer would incur P25 per cubic meter. A cubic meter of water is equivalent to 1,000 liters, or five drums. A family of five has an average water consumption of about 700 liters.