Corruption, politicking

The P107.4 billion for flood control projects under the proposed 2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP) represents the lowest funding for flood control since 2019. However, just like those that came before it, this allocation is bound to fail because it will not really address the root cause of the problem, which is the lack of a unified master plan needed to solve it.

While concerned officials promise to incorporate definitive geographic coordinates and an explicit, pre-mapped program of work, I still don’t expect them to truly provide a comprehensive, large-scale, all-inclusive plan to pursue flood control and tackle other related issues. And I believe they do that deliberately.

For the longest time, the government has historically prioritized fragmented, short-term “relief projects” over cohesive, long-term regional planning. In fact, many recommendations made by experts in the past were canceled, delayed, or never fully implemented by changing administrations.

For example, we do have pumping stations everywhere, but they cannot function properly because small and clogged drainage systems severely degrade them. As a result, water cannot efficiently reach the station to be pumped away, resulting in severe localized flooding upstream.

In addition, since our dikes are incomplete or contain gaps, the water pumped into the river simply flows back into the low-lying inland areas through those gaps. Sadly, the fact that we do not have retention tanks or retarding basins to temporarily store peak volumes of floodwater surely exacerbates the problem.

Meanwhile, appropriate agencies never really pursue nature-based solutions. They don’t have comprehensive wetland restoration, mangrove rehabilitation or even stream re-meandering projects to absorb storm surges and slow down runoff velocity. Heck, they couldn’t even manage our solid waste efficiently.

So, the question now is why couldn’t they do what they’re supposed to do? Well, I can only think of two concrete answers.

Firstly, they don’t really want to solve the problem because if they do, allocations would stop. If they come up with fragmented funding and delayed project phases instead, appropriations continue, allowing them to make insertions here and there. So everyone remains happy.

Secondly, there is a problem with continuity. Since experts claim it takes 15-20 years to fully solve the flooding problem through comprehensive, long-term master plans, no President is willing to make sacrifices because results would be felt years after he is gone from office.

This is why he — Marcos — chooses relief projects, which he can take credit for, albeit in reality they do not provide a permanent panacea. In sum, it’s really all about corruption and too much politicking. Plain and simple.