ON Tuesday evening, a day after the unexpected flood emergency that gripped Metro Manila and the surrounding area, I was half-listening to the local TV news when I caught a comment from San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora, who was being interviewed by phone. Zamora, who is concurrently the chairman of the Metro Manila Council (MMC), the governing body, as it were, of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), was calling for “interconnection” between the local government units within the National Capital Region in the development of a “new flood control master plan.”
My instant reaction to that was, “Excuse me, what?” and I had to turn around, and actually look at the TV, where the chiron (the little box of text at the bottom of the screen that describes what is happening at the moment) confirmed that yes, that was indeed what he just said.
The reason I had that reaction was that, more than a quarter of the way through the 21st century, in the Year of our Lord 2026, the very idea that the combined leadership of Metro Manila is only now thinking that they need some kind of region-wide flood control plan is absolutely mind-boggling. As the headline says, if brains were potatoes, these people, who hold a great deal of power over the safety and well-being of about 14 million people, would approximately match a can of Pringles in intelligence and awareness of reality.
If any of these knuckleheads, or the bloated administrative staff they employ through political patronage would have bothered to do a little research (took me all of about two minutes to find the pertinent information), they would know that Metro Manila already has a 14-year-old flood control master plan. In fact, it is a plan that was deemed sound enough for the World Bank to endorse and provide funding for its further development.
Back in 2012, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which was under then-secretary Rogelio Singson, who is universally acknowledged to have been the last DPWH chief to have done anything even remotely resembling a good job, prepared a comprehensive “Flood Management Master Plan for Metro Manila and Surrounding Areas.” The original document is a bit hard to find, but a good summary version — which appears to be a PowerPoint presentation of it from around that time — is available on Scribd. In addition, if one has the patience to look for it, the details are accessible through the World Bank database.
The plan was approved by the then-National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA, now DepDev) in late 2012, and had several key objectives:
– Reduce flooding from river systems that run through the metropolis, by building a dam in the upper Marikina River catchment area to reduce peak river flows entering Metro Manila during typhoons and other extreme rainfall events.
– Eliminate long-term flooding in the flood plain of Laguna de Bay to protect the population living along the shore against high water levels.
– Improve urban drainage, including modernization of Metro Manila’s pumping stations.
– Improve flood forecasting and early warning systems and community-based flood risk management.
– Improve institutional arrangements for better flood management.
In 2015, the World Bank secured a $6-million grant from the Australia-World Bank Philippines Development Trust Fund and Policy and Human Resources Development Trust Fund of Japan to finance studies and designs of other interventions for a subsequent phase of the master plan implementation, and prepared funding for the initial phase, scheduled to start in late 2017 and be completed by 2024. That project’s objectives, to be carried out jointly by the DPWH and MMDA were to modernize 36 existing pumping stations and construct 20 new ones, and improve flood control infrastructure in the cities of Manila, Pasay, Taguig, Makati, Malabon, Mandaluyong, San Juan, Pasig, Valenzuela, Quezon City and Caloocan. The project also intended to upgrade management of solid waste within villages in the vicinity of drainage systems served by the pumping stations, and to support the resettlement of “informal settler” populations encroaching on critical waterways.
Subsequent phases would have actualized other parts of DPWH’s overall plan, primarily dealing with watershed maintenance and flood control infrastructure in upland areas to reduce the burden of floodwaters coming down into the metropolis. Some work on the initial parts of the plan was done, but as it was being carried under the Duterte administration, the epitome of corruption under which the current flood control scandal blossomed, it was woefully inadequate, as anyone who was trying to go anywhere on Monday could easily attest.
That brings us back around to the idiocy of the MMC calling for a “new” flood control master plan, which epitomizes one of the chronic handicaps of this country that prevents it from developing as it should. Whether it’s a “master plan” or “road map” or “Magna Carta” or even one law dealing with a specific issue, the lack of follow-through and continuity from one political cycle to the next results in the government continuously starting over. A plan or law is not fully implemented or enforced, and thus the default solution for the next batch of leadership is to concoct a new plan or law to address the shortcomings. Rinse and repeat, and in the meantime, the entire metropolis is periodically turned into Waterworld.
Since long-term planning is anathema to politicians who operate on three- or six-year cycles, what we get instead are heterodox proposals that at best chip around the edges of the fundamental problem, and at worst are completely irrelevant. In its meeting this week, the MMC proposed a “unified ticketing system” for littering violations (under the Solid Waste Act), as if that is somehow going to make a difference. Good luck enforcing that one — after the six to eight months it will probably take to formulate the relevant ordinance and its implementing rules and regulations — in the 30 to 40 percent of Metro Manila that is made up of slum communities who are bereft of adequate and efficient public services, such as solid waste management.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
Website: www.badmannersgunclub.com
