Flooding is a perennial problem that affects everyone. We all want the instances of flooding to recede and to do so quickly.
In a continuing effort to address this problem, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) made progress by having been able to reduce the flooded area baseline of 2002 from 13,100 hectares to a total of 2,713 hectares in 2018. We are actually making a huge headway in our efforts, such that in the last two years, we have exceeded our targets by an average of 117.7 percent.
There are several factors that contributed to the achievement of these goals, to wit:
1) The declogging and desilting efforts, of which we recorded an actual accomplishment of 124.82 percent above the target for 2018, clearing some 512,378 linear meters of waterways and drainage systems.
2) The continuous maintenance of 60 drainage pumps, which are all operating in their full capacity.
3) An effective flood control operations system that is 100-percent reliable.
4) The completion of flood control infrastructure projects.
While the Commission on Audit (COA) report stated that our project accomplishment is very low, we must emphasize that there were misappropriation of terminologies used in the said report. For the district engineers, a project is deemed completed when he/she accepts the work from the contractor of the project. For the finance staff, however, a project is deemed obligated/completed once all the requisite paperwork has been submitted and a check is issued to pay the contractor. Unfortunately, this time lag between the acceptance of work and the issuance of check was considered in the COA report, thus the unfavorable result for the agency.
The MMDA adheres to the highest standards of transparency and public service. We assure the public that we have rectified the situation to avoid further confusion in the future. We also assure the public that we will continue working to the best of our abilities — rain or shine.
DANILO DELAPUZ LIM
Chair
Metropolitan Manila Development Authority