Salceda is back in action

There were at least 20 proposed bills in the list of common legislative agenda that remain pending with the 20th Congress. That was in February this year, or four months before Congress adjourned its first regular session last month. Next week, both chambers of Congress will convene anew to start their second regular session.

When they reconvene though, the senators and several congressmen will have to juggle between attending their legislative functions and the on-going impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. The impeachment trial is dragging into its ninth day today.

By this time, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) has perhaps already been updated on the status of each of the 20 bills in various stages at the legislative mill. This is supposed to be the job of the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office (PLLO). A week before Congress resumes session, it would be safe to assume Malacañang Palace is ready with the updated list that will be included in the final draft of the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 27.

Weeks after it was first rumored, PBBM finally signed last Monday the appointment paper of former Albay Rep. Joey Sarte-Salceda as his new PLLO. Salceda takes over from former undersecretary Adrian Bersamin, who served as PLLO head until his resignation in November 2025 after he was dragged into the alleged anomalies involving government flood control projects and budget insertions. For almost eight months, the PLLO was headed by Usec. Bernardo Sayo as officer-in-charge.

Salceda ran but lost in his return bid to become governor of Albay during the mid-term elections in May last year. Dubbed as the resident economist of Congress, Salceda is one of the most prolific lawmakers. He crafted many of the socio-economic bills that have been approved into law, including several controversial tax laws.

Quite a number of the 20 priority bills cited above were shepherded by Salceda in the defunct 19th Congress during his third and last term from 2022-2025. One of them is the proposed creation of a Department of Water Resources (DWR). “We have to strengthen public and private investment in the water sector to get people better access to water,” Salceda urged. He noted with concern that close to 10 percent of Filipinos – or 11 million – still have no access to adequate water or sanitation.

“With 30 agencies of various capabilities regulating water resources, we will get it wrong at least once. With one empowered agency, we can take care of our water resources in a harmonized, holistic manner,” Salceda explained earlier.

As then chairman of the House committee on ways and means during the defunct 19th Congress, Salceda pushed for the enactment of House Bill 4944. Actually, HB 4944 is a refiled bill of Salceda, who first advocated this in congresses past but it never got out of the legislative mill. During PBBM’s maiden SONA at the opening of the first regular session of the 19th Congress in July 2022, he already identified the DWR bill as among his urgent administration bills.

Like his previous bill, Salceda bewailed HB 4944 did not see the light of day in the previous Congress due to the “unspoken moratorium.” He specifically referred to the government right-sizing policy against opening new agencies that require new funding. “Some new agencies solve inefficiencies in government and deliver more benefits than their costs. This agency is one example,” Salceda argued at that time.

Fortunately, like-minded lawmakers refiled similar legislative bills in the 20th Congress to create the DWR amid the lingering impact of the El Niño phenomenon, or the prolonged period of dry spell in our country projected to last until the first quarter of next year.

Pending its passage into law, PBBM created the Water Resources Management Office on April 27, 2023 under Executive Order 22. The WRMO was established as a transitory body under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). EO 22 tasked the WRMO to integrate and harmonize the country’s water and sanitation policies while awaiting the enabling law for the DWR.

PBBM placed under the WRMO the following government agencies: Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS); the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) and the National Water Resources Board (NWRB); the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) and the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA).

“To avert water crisis, minimize and avoid conflicts and consistent with the State’s sole ownership and control over the country’s water resources, it is imperative for the government to integrate and harmonize the policies, programs and projects of all relevant agencies in the water resource sector in the fulfillment of their complementary governmental mandates,” PBBM cited in EO 22.

The President further tasked the WRMO to “shepherd and champion,” together with the PLLO, the passage of a law creating the proposed DWR and/or a regulatory commission on water.

Like the Salceda bill, the re-filed measures in the 20th Congress have proposed the creation of an umbrella department for the same government agencies.

More importantly, the proposed DWR bill is continuously and consistently supported by all the water sector stakeholders led by leading industry players, economists and civil society groups in the push for a new Cabinet-level agency for water resource management. This was confirmed to us by Ronaldo Padua and Jennifer Rufo, vice president and head of water supply operations and official spokesperson of Maynilad Water Services Inc. at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last week.

Aside from several national government agencies, Padua cited the need to get the local government units (LGUs) involved in one policy direction in the management of our country’s water resources. Once established, the DWR would hopefully resolve the disjointed regulation of all the players and users of the water sector.

Salceda can now turn into reality the creation of the DWR in the last two years of the Marcos administration.

Though working from outside the halls of Congress, Salceda, as PLLO head, is back in action.