CCT for disaster infrastructure

What the country could build now is a floating grandstand. Then it will be very convenient for BS Aquino III, the other politicians, the DSWD and DILG secretary, the disaster officials, do-goody media networks, ad nausea to perform their center-staging for the national audience. This should be very welcome next year as it is election campaign year. There must be a special rotating stage for BS Aquino and his Cabinet to announce new flood control projects, such as the headline today trumpeting a P352-billion 20-year flood control project. That announcement is clearly intended to cover BS Aquino III’s criminally insane move to cancel crucial flood control project such as the Laguna Lake dredging that could have started two years ago and may have mitigated the floods this year.

He could also have taken the initiative in reviving the Parañaque floodway project on the plans decades ago but no, he just blabbered on about “tuwid na daan.”

To start spending on flood control projects now is just catch up, which speaks of the absolute lack of strategic sense of BS Aquino III and his entire team when they sat down to govern the country two years ago. Without such strategic vision how come they now have this sudden visionary project that will span 20 years or so envisioning such a grand and majestic flood control project costing such as impressive amount. The P352-billion project cost is just a headline and easy announce but what are the details? I can’t imagine the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) suddenly conceptualizing and drawing up such a comprehensive plan that would take over 20 years to accomplish — drawn up in the span of a week at the height of the current flood crisis! It is more likely that this headline was frantically designed by Malacañang to parry the growing backlash to its dereliction the past two years of its duty to prepare the nation for these floods. From this perspective, even the aborted chopper flight of BSA III seems like a gimmick.

If the Noynoying administration had more imagination and initiative it could have done a few things early on, like combining its infamously notorious unproductive doleout conditional cash transfer (CCT) program with a work agenda related to flood control project all over the country. A flood control directed work-for-cash program engaged in cleaning up waterways, sewing water floatation jacket stuffed with trashed styrofoam packaging, cleaning sewerage systems, helping dredge canals and clearing Laguna de Bay of water lilies and silt, elevating the levees alongside Marikina, Pasig and other rivers. The CCT beneficiaries could also be engaged in building rafts for flood emergencies by assembling empty oil drums into small floating platforms for flood prone barangays where they reside. The projects could include making tools and equipment from simple auto-jack powered lifting devices, fashioning emergency stretchers, makeshift tents for earthquake crises.

We could think of many more productive projects where the CCT could be used, such as cottage industries making fiberglass safety helmets that can be distributed to schools and public offices for earthquake emergencies. I will bet that the readers of this column can come up with labor intensive projects that can channel the CCT into productive enterprises that can also help provide the basic supplies and equipment for disaster preparedness. Right there in the CCT budget is P35 billion that could already jump start for all types of disaster preparedness. When we give it some thought we see that so much can be done with the budgets already allocated today. In fact, it would be productive and fun to invite readers to send in their ideas on how else the P35-billion CCT can be used productively to provide cash for work that will help in disaster mitigation, flood control and other public effort.

We don’t need rocket scientists in the Cabinet or the DPWH, just sincere and creative men and women.

A few more ideas: Since the CCT is supposed to be directed toward the welfare of the poor, the urban homeless squatting in the flood stricken areas we see today can be prioritized. They can be assisted with self-help projects to raise their homes on stilts, and we would have new Badjao type homes on stilts that could help resident weather the weeklong floods, and provide a new tourist spot for people to marvel at. If we use the CCT budget every year toward constructing components of those plans of the DPWH engineers for solving the perennial and aggravating flood perils we’d have that P350 billion spent and invested in flood and other disaster mitigation project within 10 years. We don’t need to wait until 2035 as the DPWH announced to complete the programs. In only 10 years it would all be done, without allocating additional budgets and employing hundreds of thousands gainfully and taking home enough pay to enroll their children in school and provide sufficient nutrition for the family.

With P35-billion CCT dedicated to creating jobs in flood and disaster preparedness, or other concrete and productive projects all over the country, the environmental and safety awareness level of our people will rise — this pedagogical impact would be incalculable. No doubt, with that kind of budget and the fulfillment generated by the productive income the working poor would certainly gladly donate more floating grandstand every year for the eager do-gooders in society.

(TNT with HTL, Saturdays 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. and Sundays, on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, this week: “Mines: Theirs or Ours?”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com) –Herman Tiu Laurel, Daily Tribune