Written in floodwaters

Posts continue to flood social media on the situation around the metro — roads submerged in floodwaters, people stuck someplace or braving the rains.

This is not new to us. What would likely shock everyone is to see the opposite: no flooding in spite of heavy rainfall. Business as usual despite the stormy weather.

Well, the latter may be true for the usual frontliners, but for a country like ours lying in the pathway of typhoons, such news would be worthy, indeed.

But among tired, old headlines we should never stop digging into the one that tracks the flood control budget. As one recent post said: “Engineering can’t fix what politics keeps breaking.”

So here is a chance for some political leaders to make a tiny difference. Instead of wrangling over broken alliances, let them ask for the Filipino masses who must suffer through government messes: what has been done with the trillions allotted to flood control?

Some people love to say Senate inquiries are a useless exercise with cases ending up without resolution and, often, with the investigated merely getting a public crucifixion, whether or not this is fair. Justice? The wait for it is for us to endure.

These inquiries, however, could serve a purpose. They should at least detail the issues the public should concern itself with and, moreover, provide ordinary folks with the facts and figures that would otherwise be difficult to cull.

The last time some may remember a brouhaha over flood money was when then House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya, as head of the House Committee on Rules, accused the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) of a “fund scam” in the Flood Mitigation Structures and Drainage Systems program of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

Andaya said “P332 billion” had gone to “non-existent” flood control projects, which the DBM strongly refuted.

Then in 2024, Senator Grace Poe wanted to look into flood control too, pointing out what she called an “underutilization of the budget for flood control projects following the devastation wrought by super typhoon “Carina” and the southwest monsoon.”

Other lawmakers weighed in, with Rep. Arlene Brosas on X (formerly Twitter) echoing many Filipinos’ sentiment: “What is the purpose of the government’s large budgets for flood control projects if our homes get flooded like this?”

Poe, through Senate Resolution 1080, called for an explanation from the DPWH for the “downward trend of its fund disbursement for flood control and management projects despite receiving budget increases in the last five years.”

The head of the Committee on Finance further stated: “It behooves the Senate to demand an explanation from the DPWH, the government agency responsible for implementing the administration’s Flood Management Program, as to why such a devastating incident [referring to the effects of Typhoon Carina] still occurred despite the program’s budget steadily increasing over the past five years.”

In her 2024 report, Poe detailed: “DPWH got over P90 billion in 2020; P101 billion in 2021; P128 billion in 2022; P182 billion in 2023, and P244 billion this year.”

She demanded an explanation as to why, despite the 25-percent increases, the “budget utilization rate has been on an alarming downward trend,” with the department “disbursing only 68.26 percent in 2021; 73 percent in 2022; and 58 percent in 2023.”

If anything, Filipinos certainly deserve to know what flood control efforts have been done, what is being done, and remains to be done — and why the metro continues to be inundated during bad weather, sometimes even after a little rain, and why the same thing is happening to many other parts of the country. Are we to always be “profoundly ill-prepared,” as Poe said?

It certainly could not be the fault only of the national government, could it? Or why are local governments reduced to begging for disaster money when big calamities hit? Are we always going to suffer through all this instead of finding sustainable ways to handlewv the flooding problem?

Where do those millions in investments go? Let us follow the path of the floodwaters to find the answers.