Paulit-ulit

Our flooding problem needs to be fixed. We just spent the last week-and-a-half going all over Metro Manila and nearby provinces distributing relief goods. I really want to thank all the volunteers, government workers, medical professionals and frontliners who came to help their fellow Filipinos in need, despite being victims themselves. This is truly the spirit of bayanihan, but this isn’t sustainable. Our resilience is unparalleled but what we need are reforms.

Last year in August 2023, Super Typhoon Egay devastated the Philippines. Official government figures now indicate the damage to infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, livestock, poultry and others at a staggering P15.318 billion, and 30 deaths. As if we completely forgot the lessons of barely a year ago, last month, right after the State of the Nation Address, Metro Manila was submerged and paralyzed. Super Typhoon Carina’s damage to Philippine agriculture is currently approximately P1.21 billion, and P4.09 billion to infrastructure. Worst, we lost the lives of 40 Filipinos.

Senator Joel Villanueva delivered a rousing speech last July 29 on our perennial unsolved flashflooding problem, and I could not help but agree. Last year with Typhoon Egay, he astutely contextualized our situation as a four decades-old problem. “Paulit-ulit!”

Senator Grace Poe filed Senate Resolution No. 1080 on July 29 for a “thorough inquiry into the utilization of the DPWH’s Flood Management Program” and for the DPWH to “explain the downward trend of its fund disbursement for flood control and management projects despite getting increases in budget in the last five years.” Senator Poe also noted that with the 2024 budget for flood management in the amount of P556 billion, DPWH had at minimum P1 billion per day to fix the problem. Yet just last week DPWH admitted that our “national flood control master plan” is barely 30 percent completed, 12 years since it was created in 2012.

Never mind the flood waters’ crippling effects on Metro Manila’s commercial and motorist traffic, because it also exacerbates indigent patients’ limited options in accessing affordable quality health care and exposes them to more expenses and even to