Chronic flooding

Chronic flooding | Daily Tribune

As we do this piece, many parts of the country remain submerged due to a natural cause — the successive typhoons. Beyond a doubt, this is because of human or government officials’ negligence.

I state this considering that flooding brought about by typhoons and the habagat are chronic in this country, since even before we heard the words “climate change.”

With over a dozen typhoons coming in annually, we are certain the problem has been identified and, with that, resolving the problem in strategic terms would have been easy. We cannot be blind to the problem of flooding happening on a regular basis.

But the devastation constantly wrought on humans and their properties simply manifests insensitivity, incompetence, negligence, and corruption by high and mid-level officials of government. If this wasn’t the case, we would perhaps have a minimal issue with flooding and damage to property and agriculture.

Despite the billions in taxpayer money spent yearly on flood control and management programs, as it now stands, the floods continue with no major concrete solutions at hand.

Under this administration, P556 billion has been allocated to fund flood management programs. It’s a nightmare for farmers. The devastation from the floods has cost our economy an estimated $42 billion. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council estimated that typhoon “Crising” alone caused P421 million in damage to infrastructure.

That’s a very huge amount affecting our farmers’ livelihood, which makes them poorer than ever.

Three years and running of PBBM, his alter ego, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Manuel Bonoan, has kept his post but has not done enough to build containment dams and reservoirs to manage the floods and keep the people free from harm, instead laying hard-earned properties to waste despite having a daily allocated budget of P1.4 billion for flood control.

The NIA or National Irrigation Administration chief is part of the problem since his agency and the Department of Public Works and Highways are supposed to be partners in the effort. It’s their mandate, anyway.

NIA chief Eduardo G. Guillen is a scarce official when needed by journos to validate some information reaching us. Maybe later, he will have free time. For instance, the agency is into building the Small Reservoir Irrigation Project Program. These infra projects are earthfill dams no higher than 30 meters for irrigation purposes in order to boost agricultural production. We learned they had completed one each in Bohol, Danao and Cagayan.

Nice, because we are able to direct the floodwaters to the dams and free the areas where they are built from inundation. Sounds good and strategic in purpose.

By the way, many people may not know it but the government agency responsible for flood control is neither the DPWH nor NIA but one we never heard of. This is the River Basin Control Office (RBCO), an agency under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. It serves as the oversight agency for all.

With extreme urgency, we are of the position that there is a need for the President to issue an order, something like an emergency measure that will reduce bureaucratic red tape, provide funds, and have someone who is beyond suspect, competent and with the will to plan and implement the projects to ensure that dams and reservoirs are put up in every barangay in the country.

This was in a proposed bill by Davao Rep. Claude Bautista. This is a welcome development.

We know for a fact that Bagong Henerasyon Partylist Rep. Robert Nazal has proposed the building of water containment or mini dams to address the deadly and destructive flooding chronic to our country.