There is a proposed law at the Dumaguete City Council which seeks to impose a fee of P20 for every cubic meter of water generated from deep wells.
This law, which is now on second reading, is raising a lot of eyebrows among the business and scientific community because it is, as one prominent scientist put it, based on so many unknowns.
We do pay the Dumaguete City Water District for bringing the water to our faucets, and that is quite a big service that they do for us.
But the City does not have any participation in digging a deep well in a private lot, so this charge could hardly be justified.
The challenge for the City is not to make people pay for water but to provide free water for all.
If the purpose of this intended law is merely to raise revenues for the City, may we suggest that instead of making new laws, the City simply enforce the various laws that are already in place?
One is to strictly impose the traffic rules. At the rate many drivers are operating their vehicles today, we wonder if we have traffic rules or merely traffic suggestions. If these traffic violators were actually fined, the City’s income from traffic violations alone would surely pay big time.
We may see our traffic enforcers going about their task, issuing tickets to wrongly-parked vehicles, but that is too few and far between.
We can also charge fees for parking. We willingly pay these watch-your-car boys a minimum of P5 each time we park. Why can’t this money go to the City instead?
But pay P20 per cubic meter of water from a deep well? No, the best things in life are still free.
