NATIONAL labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno expressed support for Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares’ call to penalize Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) officials for betraying public interest by allowing its concessionaires to pass on their taxes to consumers.
“The MWSS should definitely be held accountable for prioritizing its concessionaires’ profits over the public’s interest. It is the government agency in this issue, the one that is tasked to uphold the public’s interest against big capitalists’ greed,” KMU secretary-general Roger Soluta said.
“Maynilad and Manila Water should also be penalized for siphoning off billions of profits by stealing from workers and the urban poor who are already impoverished by lack of jobs and measly wages. They are a personification of corporate greed,” Soluta added.
KMU also demanded a cash refund from Maynilad and Manila Water after the group Water for the People Network exposed that the water firms passed on all their taxes, totalling P15.5 billion in the period 2008-2012, to consumers.
“It is illegal, immoral and unjust for these water firms to earn billions of profits by exploiting workers and the poor. The government has also betrayed the people by allowing these firms to profit from public utilities,” Soluta said.
“We demand an immediate cash refund of our payments! That is the least that the Aquino government could do to uphold the public interest in this issue,” he added.
Soluta also called for the junking of concessionaires’ contracts with the MWSS and a stop to the privatization of vital public utilities, saying the government should take over basic services and ensure that public interest is upheld over private gains.
“Contracts with the Maynilad of the Pangilinans and the Manila Water of the Ayalas should be junked. The government should stop its policy of privatizing water and other vital public utilities that has been increasing the burden of workers and the poor,” Soluta said.
“The government should instead take over these utilities and ensure that public interests would be prioritized over private gains,” he added.
KMU cited privatization as a policy that caused the drastic increases in the prices of basic services and utilities such as water, electricity, transportation and health services.
The labor center has been calling for a nationwide protest against soaring prices one week before Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s fourth State of the Nation Address on July 22.
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