Immeasurable

The Mega Manila area and Central Luzon were submerged by monsoon rains through most of August. The anger of citizens over what they perceive as government neglect is immeasurable.

When Donald Trump was asked about the tragic cascade in Nepal this week, he was quoted as saying: “Not many people know that flooding happens because of water.”

Our President said nearly the same thing about a week earlier. The flooding, BBM said, was because of heavy rains.

Both presidents never fail to state the obvious.

Blame the weather. That is easy. But someone has to explain why flood management, which is supposed to be based on some central design such as that the Japan International Cooperation Agency helped us draw, was supplanted by budget allocations designed according to congressional district boundaries. This alone suggests institutionalized anomaly.

Today, our hospitals are swamped with leptospirosis cases. This is the expected outcome of millions of Filipinos forced to wade through dirty floodwaters. The flooding not only damages homes and ruins crops. It could also cause deaths.

While the streets were flooded and whole communities were cut off, while pupils were separated from learning institutions and workers could not earn their wages, only one government official seemed functional throughout the deluge: Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon. The rest of government appeared immobilized.

Dizon has been accused of showboating by turning up where conditions were most severe. But he has no choice. He is public works secretary. It is his duty to show up – or else our people begin suspecting that all of government has scampered to dry ground.

Also, Dizon seems to be the only senior official who can show his face in the midst of calamity without fear of being booed or chased away. He does not need to be in the company of a large entourage protected by a substantial security force. He is always dressed for work, not for ceremony.

Take the case of his face-to-face meeting days ago with the group Tindig Hagonoy in the province of Bulacan. The group is among the most vocal about flood control corruption. The town of Hagonoy is almost permanently submerged year-round because the mitigating infrastructure was never built to standards.

In the midst of the flooding, the people of Hagonoy, garbed in black, held a rally to show their anger at government’s failure – not only in that town, but in the whole province. Renato de la Cruz, leader of that group, warmly welcomed Dizon to their soaked community. He described the public works secretary, whose initial task was the clean up a corrupted agency, as someone willing to listen.

Dizon did more than listen. He did not just blame the weather or the accumulated trash. He inspected the cause of the flooding and ordered his agency to repair the defective coastal dikes that caused the town to be inundated for decades.

Dizon understood the problem immediately. Flood control infrastructure in Hagonoy and nearby towns were like bullets that missed their targets entirely and caused more harm than good. The existing infrastructure was in dire need of basic redesign anchored on common sense – something the public works bureaucracy appears to have lost sight of in order to make way for corruption.

The official did not leave Hagonoy with vague promises. He left a commitment with a clear timeline. The nine-kilometer dike protecting the town will be rebuilt next year. It will be rebuilt to perform as an effective barrier against seawater rise and to serve as an outlet for excess rainwater.

The solution did not require rocket science. But it required something more difficult: delivering the precise infrastructure needed without the tampering of corrupt syndicates infesting our government.

Nor does anything need to be reinvented. The plans for Hagonoy form part of the Pampanga River Basin Masterplan, the outcome of comprehensive hydrological study. This masterplan has been there for a while. On the shelves. Ignored by those who were instead looking into how kickbacks may be drawn from government projects.

All the while, projects were drawn up according to political demarcations and according to the whims of those who have power over the purse. This is why the engineering of public works projects often do not cohere. This is why poor facsimiles of dikes collapse at the slightest test of nature. This is why EDSA regrew potholes just months after a costly rehab.

Dizon’s task is larger than merely uncovering the right engineering solutions. Heeding science is easy.

The larger task is how to clear the thicket of corruption that makes simple solutions a thousand times more complex. That thicket makes the provision of basic public works a thousand times more challenging.

I know Vince. Rather, I knew him from when times were simpler. He is an even-tempered person not prone to angry outbursts. At the least, he was a person who guards his language.

What I see from the news clips is an exasperated crusader. The rings around his eyes are darker. The wrinkles are deeper. The anger is evident.

Here is a man who must rebuild a damaged agency while continuing to deliver the infra our people so desperately need. The quality infra we need cannot be delivered for as long as petty politics impinges on our public works.

I trust Vince will be relentless before the ogre he must face.