The administration’s recent interventions to address floods are surely resounding… well, at least for those in urbanized areas who are lucky to reap it. But the lives of innocent people would be spared only if all the prone areas were given equal attention, not a selective short-term solution.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced the rehabilitation of the Magat Dam from Cagayan to “help farmers’ crops for agriculture after the recent typhoons hit the province and around it this 2024”. 

Flood control infrastructures were swiftly inaugurated in Bulacan, Pampanga, and the National Capital Region (NCR) due to their so-called “contribution” to the Philippine economy. 

If the state’s goal is to prioritize big cities, students from the countryside like me, who have not even the privilege of affordable transportation, would not even have the benefit of continuing classes due to suspensions. Therefore, the state’s goal is to strip the learners from “irrelevant” towns of their right to education.

There is a total allocation of P450-B in the national budget for flood control projects. That means that the government spends P1.4-B pesos a day on them, according to Senator Imee Marcos. 

With all that money out of our pockets and in the trust of the government, how can there still be floods evident in many corners of cities? In that case, instead of clean-up drives ordered by the government to reduce rising waters, let’s ask the government to clean itself first.

According to the Climate Change Commission (2024), a total of 1.42 million hectares of tree cover was lost from 2001 to 2022 in the Philippines. Had they only not cut the trees in the mountain, and turned the mountains into planes, the house my parents had taken their whole lives to build would not have been so mercilessly toppled by the worsening waves. 

Their human-made solutions to human-made problems will eventually erode, and if the raft of safety is only reserved for those bustling cities, I cannot see any further hope for the ship’s sinking inevitability.