(Interaksyon) MANILA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — In the three years since a private company took charge of the water supply in his home city in the Philippines, Rommel Pido says the flow from his taps has turned a murky brown and his bill has more than doubled.

Nowadays, residents “make do with this iced tea water from the taps”, Pido told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from his home in Bacolod, a city of 600,000 people in the Western Visayas region.

Angry at the deterioration, Pido and other residents filed a legal complaint seeking to nullify the 2020 joint venture agreement (JVA) that gave the lead role in city water operations to PrimeWater, a company owned by the family of the country’s richest man Manny Villar.