Palace, DSWD vouch for bucket-filtered water; kit rollout set next week

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will begin distributing water filtration kits next week as the country braces for the impact of “Super El Niño.”

At a Palace briefing on Wednesday, DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian demonstrated how to install a water filtration system on a bucket. He and Palace press officer Claire Castro also drank the filtered water and vouched for its potability.

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“Malinis po iyong tubig,” said Castro.

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(The water is clean.)

According to Gatchalian, the kit can filter water from deep wells, springs, and even rainwater. It can filter up to 1 million gallons of water over five years, with a removal rate of 99.99 percent. He added that the kit had passed the Philippine National Standards for Drinking Water.

Gatchalian said the Department of Health considers the filtration kit a “medical device.” It can remove bacteria and other pathogens associated with diseases such as cholera, salmonellosis, amoebic dysentery, E. coli infections, botulism and typhoid, as well as coliform bacteria, he added.

“Starting next week, parang ipapadala namin iyong mga balde nila sa bahay, kakabitan namin ito,” he said, adding that areas under state of calamity will be prioritized.

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(Starting next week, we will begin delivering buckets to people’s homes and installing the necessary attachments.)

“Sabay-sabay nationwide pero siyempre unahin na natin iyong may mga state of calamity na kasi obviously doon nagiging problema na ang drinking water. Pero mayroon tayong mga na-identify dito sa Metro Manila na high-density communities na mababa na iyong water pressure. So doon rin tayo magro-roll out,” the DSWD chief said.

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(We will roll this out nationwide simultaneously, but of course, we will prioritize areas under a state of calamity because that is where drinking water has obviously become a problem. We have also identified high-density communities in Metro Manila where water pressure is already low. We will roll out the program there as well.)

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Gatchalian said the water filtration kits would be distributed free of charge. The DSWD is also planning to establish community-based filtration systems.

“It’s safe for everybody. It’s potable for human consumption – so, lahat tayo (so it’s for all of us),” he said.

Gatchalian stressed that the distribution of water filtration kits was not a new initiative, noting that the DSWD had been providing them to communities affected by disasters since 2024.

“Hindi naman ngayon lang dahil may El Niño, kung hindi tulad ng sinabi ni Usec. [Castro], matagal na naming ginagawa itong paghahanda; it’s part of the resiliency program in the department,” he said.

(This is not something we are doing only now because of El Niño. As Usec. [Castro] said, we have been preparing for this for a long time. It is part of the department’s resiliency program.)

“Again, the locations, it’s all in our Facebook or our webpage, 5,000 plus of these small water impounding projects ang tumatakbo na nationwide. So iyan iyong isa nating resilience for such event tulad na itong El Niño,” he added.

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(Again, the locations are all listed on our Facebook page or website. More than 5,000 of these small water impounding projects are already operational nationwide. These are part of our resilience measures for events such as El Niño.) /mr