IT was once again an all-too-familiar ordeal we have to bear when most parts of Metro Manila was submerged with dirty flood water spawn by the heavy downpour of rains last Thursday afternoon.
As a result, afternoon classes and works were suspended, sending many of us who are ordinary students and employees fending for ourselves out in the cold and wet as we were all stranded in horrendous traffic for hours just to be able to get home and rest our tired body.
It is expected that with the onset of wet (rainy) eason, Metro Manila and nearby provinces will once again experience old same ordeal that has worsened in the past few years due to changes in climate and the public’s lack of discipline and poor infrastructure.
Most people vent their frustrations and anger through social media, blaming the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for their failure to come up with a permanent solution to flooding problem.
Others have grown tired and are resigned to the fact that the people have no one to blame but themselves for their indiscriminate disposal of waste and garbage that clogged most of our drainage and canal system.
Those of us who throw our waste indiscriminately do not have any right to complain and blame others.
Those of us who built our houses along esteros have no one to blame but ourselves if we lose our loved ones or destroy our properties.
Our society in general has to share the blame too, for allowing illegal structures, including shanties along our esteros, to be constructed and block the spillage or flow of these dirty flood water that brings diseases and illnesses to many of us.
Of course, it is no fault of the MMDA or DPWH alone in as much as it is the fault of the people and our society as a whole. But the biggest responsibility lies on the shoulder of those people we elect in office for their hold the power – and the purse –to resolve this problem.
It is not because we have run out of solutions to resolve the problem. The national government has come up with a comprehensive master plan in addressing the flooding problem throughout the country. These are grand plans, alright, and most of them seem to be doable. The real problem however is that the government has not put where its mouth is, meaning that it has not funded these anti-flood projects.
And if at all the national government has funded either through its own or from foreign governments, these funds are not spent to where they are allocated for. Much of these funds for anti-flood programs and projects go to the pockets of those we put in power.
Que lastima!avite.
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