West Zone concessionaire Maynilad Water Services, Inc. (Maynilad) formally signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), a constituent unit of the Department of Justice located in Poblacion, Muntinlupa City, to connect the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) to its water network.
Some 20,000 individuals living in the NBP Compound—which holds the prison facilities and the residential community of BuCor employees—now have 24-hour supply of clean water from Maynilad. They used to have only four hours of water daily from NBP’s deep wells.
The agreement also paved the way for the laying of a 10-kilometer pipeline that brought potable water to Maynilad’s expansion areas further south of Muntinlupa. This enabled the company to reach an additional 50,000 customers in the city, particularly those from NHA-Southville 3 and Victoria Homes.
For years, these areas in Muntinlupa relied solely on water supply from deep wells, which have already become over-extracted and thus produce low yield. Muntinlupa has been identified by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) as an area in danger of land subsidence due to the over-extraction of groundwater.
Maynilad President and CEO Ramoncito S. Fernandez thanked the local government and the NBP for facilitating the expansion project that enabled it to bring surface water to these areas of Muntinlupa. “Thank you for sharing our concern for the environment,” he said during the contract-signing held at the NBP grounds.
Maynilad is the largest private water concessionaire in the Philippines in terms of customer base. It is the agent and contractor of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) for the West Zone of the Greater Manila Area, which is composed of the cities of Manila (certain portions), Quezon City (certain portions), Makati (west of South Super Highway), Caloocan, Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Valenzuela, Navotas and Malabon all in Metro Manila; the cities of Cavite, Bacoor and Imus, and the towns of Kawit, Noveleta and Rosario, all in Cavite Province.
