Great flood scandal

The great flood as recounted in the Bible is not fiction as the Philippines has to live through it more than once yearly as a result of the greed and inefficiency of appointed officials.

Poorly conceived infrastructure despite the huge budget outlays are being blamed for the recent massive flooding that resulted from the incompetence and neglect of officials of the implementing agency, the Department of Public Works and Highways, and local government units.

DAILY TRIBUNE has been a witness and even a victim of a sloppy government project that resulted in flooding in front of its building on Florida Street in Makati. The water after a heavy downpour accumulates apparently because of the changes made in the drainage that forces water to seep under the building.

Moreover, the canal leading to the culvert was built higher than the road resulting in the accumulation of water even after a weak rain.

On a larger scale, such haphazard projects proliferate leading to the waste of government funds.

Senator JV Ejercito last week expressed dismay over the “piecemeal” construction of dams, spillways and other flood control projects, which are being funded at over P200 billion this year under the purview of the DPWH.

The senator pointed out the lack of a unified master plan for flood control and water management.

Thus, Filipinos have to contend with the predictable floods during the rainy season and the lack of water when the dry season starts.

What we need is a long-term plan for water management. We must manage the situation through dikes and dams since the demand in the urban centers is growing due to the bigger population,” Ejercito said.

A water management program is long overdue, he added.

Ejercito cited the practice of the DPWH and the local governments of preferring makeshift solutions to solve the perennial dilemma.

He cited the need to build spillways since Central Luzon is a natural catch basin.

The irony is that the mismanagement of anti-flood projects by the DPWH happened during the term of Mark Villar, who is now a colleague of Ejercito in the Senate.

The Senate Committee on Public Works joint hearing with the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change on the status of flood control projects nationwide could have obtained valuable inputs from Villar who served as DPWH chief for five years under former President Rodrigo Duterte.

The DPWH was the main implementing agency of flagship projects under the Build, Build, Build program. The whole undertaking was funded at an average of P1.5 trillion a year and economic managers then said the infrastructure buildup was needed to make the country competitive with its neighbors to attract investments and at the same time maintain the steady growth momentum.

In 2018, the DPWH under Villar was allotted P637.9 billion, a 40-percent increase from the P454.7-billion 2017 budget.

Following the influx of funding to the DPWH, complaints were raised about local, legislative, and public works officials colluding with favored but unqualified contractors in a syndicated web of corruption.

Private builders who participate in biddings for government projects raised the need for measures to insulate and isolate infrastructure projects from political intervention which has become syndicated.

A contractor said the enormity of the allotment for the Build, Build, Build (BBB) program widened opportunities for corruption.

The contractor said, “With the focus on the money to be made, many projects wound up suffering from poor planning and monitoring and were awarded even with unsettled right-of-way issues.”

Government, including Congress, must get to the bottom of the waste of public money through failed infrastructure such as the flood control projects that attracted uncontrolled greed.

Just maybe the government may haul in its first big fish in what is shaping up to be a scandal far bigger than the P10-billion pork barrel scam of the recent past.