Rain poured once again in our place yesterday. My sons had to make do with the raincoats that their mother bought and the motorcycle. With climates like this, life is difficult. Reminds me of those times when I was younger and working. You have to fight through the rain or…
My aunt celebrated her birthday a couple of weeks ago. I rode in my brother’s car to the place of my cousin Marissa in the Talamban area where my Tiya Rosa now stays in her old age.
Rain like this one today also poured when we went home. I told the driver, who is the husband of my brother’s daughter, to drop me in the Sun.Star Cebu building where I planned to stay until the rain stopped. I know the flood-prone areas in Cebu and it would be foolish for me to proceed home without considering this reality.
I stayed with the guard in the closed front office until the rain stopped. There, I noticed that the flood-prone parking area of the bank visible from the Sun.Star front office had already been condemned. What remained are the few parking slots near the sidewalk. I thought it was the best move the bank owners could take because the underground parking area there got flooded every time the rain poured in torrents.
Flash floods. Ahh… I remember a good friend who bought a brand new vehicle, a small one, and went on to drive it home while the rain fell. He got caught in a flash flood in the Parian area. As the water engulfed his vehicle, he had to get the help of children playing in the rain to push his vehicle to a safer place. But he had to eventually leave the car because the measure helped but little. I was told later that my friend had to buy a new engine to replace the one that was damaged by the flash flood.
Drainage in Metro Cebu needs to be given attention to prevent street flooding. Our drainage system is old and was built for a small and old city. In first world countries some people even live in drainage systems that are so big and deep flash flooding on streets is non-existent. Or at least that is what one sees in the movies. Metro Cebu has still to build a drainage system that fits its present and future targets.
On this a master plan is needed. Meaning that setting up a decent drainage system for Metro Cebu needs money. Millions of pesos of it. And we know how much of that goes to the pockets of contractors and government officials. There is corruption in every government project. The alternative to that is no project at all.
I was a Capitol beat reporter when the late Vicente de la Serna was governor. He hated those “SOPs” or the portion of a project funding given to government officials as “commissions.” In the end, he did not have street construction projects to boast of. He was governor for only one term.
This “corruption in the bureaucracy” business is actually a cycle. After that “pork barrel” corruption cycle ended, we now have this “flood control projects” corruption cycle. Some heads may roll, true, but after this another corruption cycle will be created as a new set of government officials find ways to make money again. Sad but true.