Floods, budget insertions, more taxes

It just keeps getting worse every monsoon season – Metro Manila’s roads, alleys and even major thoroughfares are left submerged in floodwaters. Taxpayers’ money is washed away with the tide and the heaps of garbage that clog our cities’ nooks and crannies.

Tuesday noon in rainy Manila, after traveling for an hour from Quezon City, I found myself stuck just right before a flooded intersection, some 50 meters away from my office in Parañaque. The roads were not passable. I was so near, yet so stuck. I had to park in a nearby restaurant to wait for the waters to subside, but the heavy rains just wouldn’t stop. The water levels just kept rising. After waiting for half an hour or so, I had no choice but to turn back.

But who am I to complain? From the relative safety of my car, I could see men, women and children wading through knee-high waters just to make it to where they were heading. Some had nothing to protect them from the torrential downpour; others managed to get some cover with their umbrellas. Motorcycle and tricycle drivers were all drenched but continued to their destinations, perhaps to earn a living despite nature’s wrath.

In the Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan, the Associated Press captured a couple exchanging vows in the flooded church. The beautiful bride, in her white wedding dress, walked down the aisle, which was flooded with waters nearly knee-deep.

On Tuesday night, a colleague left the office around 6 p.m. only to get stuck in a flooded portion of NLEX. He reached his home around 3 a.m. Another colleague, who took the LRT, left around 6:30 p.m. and made it to her home in Quezon City around 11 p.m.

In times like this, we realize once again why we get stuck in floods. Billions in flood-control projects are lost to corruption.

Actually, one does not have to wait for the floods to come to see where our money goes. Our roads become riddled with potholes even if the rains aren’t so heavy yet. It goes to show the quality of infrastructure we allow ourselves to have.

And yet, life must go on for Filipinos every monsoon season despite stormy weather. Ordinary Filipinos, who cannot afford not to make a living even for just a day, are the ones who pay the price of corruption.

It’s bound to get worse.

Moving forward, we must take these lessons to heart. Our politicians must stop using flood-control projects to make more money or to keep themselves in power.

This is not a myth. I’ve talked to contractors who attest to the corruption of their patrons – lawmakers and local chief executives who give them projects but ask for a huge sum in return, mostly for flood-control projects because they are difficult to monitor or check.

Budget insertions

Every year, the budget for flood-control projects just keeps increasing, yet the floods grow deeper.

VERA Files revealed “some budget insertions by Senate President Chiz Escudero.”

The biggest allocation, the report said, goes to Bulacan province in the sum of P12 billion – some P2.9 billion for flood control, P3.3 billion for roads and P2.2 billion for streetlights. There were several more “budget insertions” by Escudero, the report said, and one wonders if taxpayers’ money will indeed go for the intended projects. Just the same, the amounts just seem excessively high.

Lack of a masterplan

Mahar Lagmay, a director of Project NOAH, also points to a very interesting cause of the floods. The real reason why Metro Manila gets flooded when the rains come is that many of our roads are supposedly waterways, and yet we have turned them into roads or we choose to build structures on these areas.

He cites a study published in ScienceDirect: “Metro Manila’s floods are compounded by many factors including encroachment of concrete surfaces, densification of buildings and residential areas, silting of riverbeds and canals, obstruction of waterways by informal settlers, clogging of floodways by garbage, narrowing of rivers due to development on floodplains, draining and filling in of small rivers forcing more water into fewer channels, forest degradation and reclamation of coastal land.”

Indeed, we are suffering from a lack of proper planning and vision. The government just allows it.

More taxes

Against this backdrop, our government resorts to new taxes to raise much-needed revenues.

One example is the controversial tax as a result of the Capital Markets Efficiency Promotion Act (CMEPA). The recently passed law unified the final withholding tax on interest income to a flat 20 percent.

For example, someone who saved P200,000 in a five-year time deposit would have earned P8,000 annually, which was tax-free under the old system. Under CMEPA, the annual take-home drops to P6,400.

The taxes on deposits will especially hurt the middle class, the OFWs and the daily wage earners who just want to save a bit for retirement or some emergency.

The backlash is not unfounded.

One wonders what additional taxes we will be burdened with to make up for revenue lost to corruption.

Why can’t our government learn?

Our recent floods are not just a failure of urban planning. They are really about corruption – a symptom of greed and the absence of conscience and compassion.

The more corrupt our politicians get, the worse our floods – and many of our other problems – will become.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X  @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.