In a letter addressed to Councilor Claudio Puentevella dated October 10, 2022, Lawyer Joel Dojillo, hold-over president of the association, said they understand the concern of the City Health Office (CHO) and the City Council in ensuring that the drinking water sold by the refilling stations are indeed clean and potable.
“But while we also welcome the inspection and test on the potability of the drinking water or finished product, we strongly object to the absurd, unreasonable, illogical, unnecessary, and warranted imposition of the CHO to also subject the raw water for testing since the same is not drinking water,” he said.
To ensure the potability of drinking water sold by water refilling stations, he added that it is imperative that the present practice of the CHO of simply requiring water stations to submit the result of the testing or tests be changed.
In public hearing conducted on Thursday, October 20, Puentevella, chairperson of the City Council committee on health, said the CHO and the representative of the Department of Health-Western Visayas had come up with recommendations to address the issues raised by Dojillo that for the time being minimum requirements of potability test check can operate while undergoing the compliance of all the sanitary permits.
“For the meantime, the local water quality monitoring committee is in the process,” he said.
He added the CHO agreed that those without permits, the sanitary inspectors will monitor the water refilling station.
Puentevella said the DOH-6 will also give two days course training for all water refilling stations operating in Bacolod City.
The City Legal Office (CLO) earlier served notices to more than 90 water refilling stations in Bacolod, asking them to voluntarily stop their operations.
CHO records showed that as of October 4, the sanitary inspectors visited a total of 204 water refilling stations, of which 95 were discovered to have been operating without sanitary and business permits.
City Legal Officer Romeo Carlos Ting Jr. earlier said the water refilling station owners should secure sanitary and business permits to ensure the safety of their customers and to legitimize their operations. (MAP)