Mitigating natural disasters (2)

Mitigating disastrous flooding is not an easy job, more so if the government officials concerned don’t act or don’t have it in their heads or the political will to step up to the challenge. This serious concern while requiring a total approach involving not just government but all of us depends mainly on the leaders of government. It’s their mandate, anyway.

President Bongbong Marcos had expressed concern about flood mitigation as a principal undertaking. Last August, he inaugurated the P7.7-billion Korea-funded flood mitigation project. We hope this billion-peso undertaking works and will save lives and properties. Recently, Marcos ordered the DPWH to look into the mothballed Bicol River Basin Project to address the transformation of lands there into a deadly sea. Good.

Indeed, among the many problems and concerns as a consequence of the deadly typhoons entering the country, in batches of 10 on the average annually, is the flooding. This work of nature may be attributed to, in a sense, human abuse of the environment which kills and injures people, inundates agri farms, all kinds of infrastructure and communities without exception. There are no rich or poor, hut or mansion of the rich and famous when the horrible sea of rainwater swallows everything in its path.

Studies give us an idea of what measures are needed to mitigate flooding and its hazardous effect. But so little has been done. Let’s start on our end with something we can do right away provided space is no obstacle. It must be required of each and every residential, commercial, industrial and government building, as it is done in Australia, to incorporate rainwater catch tanks.

Structures without one in place, ideally a minimum 3,000-liter catch tank, should get one. This will handle some household and gardening needs. One will save on water bills aside from having a source for emergency needs.

A bigger effort the government must aggressively pursue is putting up massive structures like water catchment and impounding tanks and building more dams and basins in strategic low-lying areas. We need appropriate-sized culverts that work to desilt all rivers big and small, in addition to maintaining existing structures.

Strict monitoring by the Office of the President would minimize projects pushed by solons and the DPWH that are tainted by corruption. It was never their job. The pork barrel by any means is illegal.

As we have learned, the public works department in coordination and partnership with the DENR, DA, NIA, DBM and DoF, if serious and corruption-free, can do wonders.

One good potential fruit is the increase in irrigation facilities to solve the problem of insufficient rice supply, which endless news stories tell us we have been importing from neighboring Asian countries.

Nothing has changed despite the many presidents and agriculture secretaries that have come and gone. Obviously they had done nothing. In our native street lingo, we call it “bokya.” Indeed, I don’t know how to hide my frustration, my face in shame, with the way we have handled the very, very critical issue of rice supply.

Every farmer I have talked to said support from the government is their never-ending cry. Even DA Region 8 did nothing about the tractor requested by a farmer organization in 2018.

We ask, what is the government doing to attain a sustainable degree of support for the farmers which should ultimately lead to rice self-sufficiency, instead of having to import rice, eternally?

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