AN idealistic young doctor taking up a master's degree in public health — yes, the type who's more interested in helping shape public health policy and improve health systems than earning about P100,000 for every quickie nose lift — can eminently write a thesis on the predictable surge in leptospirosis cases every rainy season, and maybe devote Chapter 1 of that thesis to the correlation between this surge and official corruption or congressional greed. Can I use the word "causality" instead of correlation?
Now, how does the predictable surge in leptospirosis cases every rainy season relate to official corruption-cum-congressional greed? Be patient with the longish explanation below.
In the ideal world, rainwater, like those dumped by Typhoon Carina recently, should seamlessly flow into the rivers and seas through efficient flood control structures right after the downpours are over. Controlling floods and freeing populated areas from stagnant pools of undrained floodwaters is one of the more established engineering institutions of modern society, and building efficient flood control systems is one of the most essential tasks of government. Constructing flood control structures has a fairly long history, dating back to the Roman Empire.
Flood-caused stagnant pools of water pose a menace to the affected communities on multiple fronts, and not just in terms of impaired mobility. Stagnant water collects human and animal waste, including rat excrement, as it lies immobile and dangerous.
That settlements have to have working and efficient flood control systems is a mandatory policy for countries, even those with fiscal constraints, precisely to avoid having such pools of dangerous, stagnant water in densely populated communities.
When the great Lee Kwan Yew was leading Singapore out of Third World-hood and extreme poverty, one of the four scourges he wanted the city-state's pioneering urban planners to get rid of was its perennial flooding problem.
One who wades with lesions, scabies, cuts and wounds into these toxic, stagnant waters is in danger of contracting leptospirosis — which really did happen after the stagnant floodwaters from Typhoon Carina stayed for days in congested urban communities, mostly in Metro Manila, Central Luzon and Calabarzon. The surge was such that the National Kidney Institute (NKI) and San Lazaro Hospital are now reportedly overwhelmed with people on the verge of dying from leptospirosis. The Philippine National Red Cross has sent emergency assistance teams to the NKI to help the state-run hospital cope with the surge.
Questions: Are the existing flood control structures in Metro Manila, Central Luzon and Calabarzon — also the beating hearts of the national economy and from which most of the leptospirosis cases were reported — supposed to fail? Are they theoretically helpless against the rains Carina dumped? Or inadequate? Answer: No to all these questions. On paper, and based on the sheer amount of funds poured into flood control projects in these three critical regions over the past several years, these projects can more than deal with the volume of rain Carina brought.
A cursory look at the main expenditures in our yearly National Expenditure Program shows this constant feature: the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways, year in and year out and without fail, has a jumbo allocation under "flood control." Last year, the budget for flood control was over P240 billion; this year, more than P250 billion. Some departments have budgets routinely smaller than these jumbo allocations for flood control. Allocating massive funds for flood control has been a regular feature of the yearly national budget.
In the aftermath of Carina, in the wake of the dozens of unnecessary deaths and the surge in leptospirosis cases, the overwhelming and urgent question of where have all these funds gone is now a question of the land. The straightforward answer is this: it lined the pockets of dozens of congressional leaders who recommended the construction of flood control projects in their district, then took a cut from them that forced the public works contractors implementing the projects to make these substandard, inadequate and inefficient. It's the usual ghastly story of the corrupted pork barrel system tainting the structural integrity of the flood control structures it funded.
But there is something definitely more corrupt than lawmakers taking a cut from flood control projects they themselves endorsed. The billions of pesos that regularly go into dredging waterways over the past several years, also technically under flood control, has been a bigger source of congressional corruption. Here, the "commission" for lawmakers who recommended these "dredging" projects is more than the usual 30 percent to 40 percent that they get from projects such as flood control, the so-called road reblocking and asphalting.
There is really no way to measure the efficiency of dredging projects. The technical parameters applied by government inspectors on road and bridge and actual flood control projects are not applicable to dredging projects. That is the reason many congressional scoundrels who want to maximize the "tongpats" from their pork barrel allocations recommend "dredging" projects that are almost beyond the realm of transparency and accountability.
The equation can simply be written this way. Flood control projects have been historically overwhelmed with massive and nonstop funding. But congressional corruption resulted in the construction of inadequate and substandard flood control structures that can't even cope with routine flooding. And as Carina had amply demonstrated, these stagnant pools of floodwater turn lethal in due time, the harbinger of leptospirosis.
We all know this. Just the optics of the toxic combination of dirty floodwaters and leptospirosis — both symptoms of a backward society — are enough to sink all the current hoopla about our supposed forthcoming ascent to First World-hood.
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