Lawmakers should be cautious of DPWH’s proposed budget

I watched with glee how House representatives scrutinized Vice President Sara Duterte’s proposed P2-billion budget for 2025. But I want to caution them to be as thorough with the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) proposed budget of P900 billion for 2025. Just like VP Sara, the DPWH’s budget can be reduced to zero. You see, this department has perfected corruption by creating projects that do not solve any problem. They also keep dismantling perfectly paved roads. Check out the Facebook page that can be accessed through this link.

In that page are posted different videos taken by netizens of heavy equipment drilling long stretches of perfect roads, clear examples of the waste of taxpayer money and of corruption. DPWH has already spent P1.2 trillion on flood control projects since 2009. Yet we are still experiencing heavy floods.

There’s a holistic way of looking at this: We should be prioritizing reforestation of our watersheds. There’s a study by Dumaguit, D., Poblete, K., Peralta, E.M., et al. (2021) that the Upper Marikina Watershed has only 11.7 percent remaining forest cover. Planning should be “ridge-to-reef.” We should be starting from the top (ridge), and proceed downwards (reef). No matter what we do in the lowlands, it won’t amount to anything if there’s nothing to hold the water in our mountains.

This flood problem won’t be solved by DPWH alone. We should not have too much hope in DPWH accomplishing this. Ergo, no budget or very minimal budget for this agency. Let us try nature-based solutions once and for all. We can always attract private investors to reforest our watershed. Timber and forest product (e.g., rattan, resin-forming trees, etc.) farming is such a lucrative industry. We just need to set an enticing program and market it well. Housing czar Jerry Acuzar is doing just that in meeting our housing backlog: Letting private entities shoulder the financing and construction of socialized housing.

In November 2015, Alfred Mahar Lagmay, Ph.D., of Project Noah, in his “Moving forward with Manila’s flood plan” article, concurred with Carlo Arcilla, Ph.D., on the flawed P350-billion master flood control project of DPWH. Lagmay proposed a nonstructural way to adapt with the floods, as compared to DPWH’s myopic and corruption-laden methods. We can’t trust the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” character of the DPWH, the same department that keeps executing road-widening projects. I have seen one in Balanga, Bataan, in 2018—where they cut or balled around 4,000 trees. There is just no congruence with what this department is doing.

Let us instead channel more funds to health care, education, and industry expansion. The Department of Trade and Industry has books on the different livelihood activities one can pursue, and the banks one can run to for possible financing. We need to be a nation with agricultural surpluses that we can eventually export as value-added products. I dream of the day when our masa would become active players in a bustling economy, and when more doctors would staff our barangay health centers. We need to fund this.

Chester C. Chang,
[email protected]