LAPSES IN WATER SECURITY

There is no way around it, because for sure, lapses in water security could lead to problems in food security. Of course, it is true that water is life, but water is also necessary to produce the food that sustains human life. A perfect example of this is the cooking of rice. You might already have the rice grains, lots of it, but you cannot cook it if you do not have lots of water. In a recent incident in Baguio City, several people including some tourists fell ill supposedly because of contaminated water. The good news it, it was not the tap water that was contaminated. What was reportedly contaminated was the water that was delivered by the water trucks. The bad news is that there seems to be no system to monitor the safety of water delivered by way of these trucks. In a previous article, I already wrote about the need to regularly monitor the safety of both tap water and bottled water. I was able to confirm that there is now a system in place to monitor these two water sources, although the inspection schedules are not as frequent as I wanted it to be. Apparently, the inspection of water trucks is not included in this system. What happened in Baguio City should be a wake-up call for all of us that not only should we include the safety of tap water and bottled water more frequently, we should now also include the inspection of trucked water. To add to that, we should now transfer the function of water safety to the LGUs, under the direct supervision of the DILG. IKE SENERES/02-13-2024