Donate to RP rehab at your own risk

A month after total flooding from Ondoy, Marikina is back on its feet — thanks largely to charitable souls. Civic, religious and trade groups, with altruistic families and barkadas, came in droves to help stricken folk recover from calamity. Three weeks hence, most residents have returned to their homes, and businesses have reopened.

 Among the first and most intensive helpers were Tzu Chi volunteers. As soon as the storm abated, they waded through floods to bring water and 55,025 meal packs to 26,000 residents of Barangays Nangka and Malanday. Rain boots were distributed to 1,700 families. Dozens of doctors and nurses converged in free medical-dental clinics for three weekends. When floods subsided Tzu Chi brought in backhoes and dump trucks. Thousands of residents were paid to clean up their own communities of muck and garbage. At P400 for each of the 84,860 man-days, Tzu Chi’s benefactors paid out at least P33 million. School supplies awaited children when classes resumed. All this, following humanism teachings of Tzu Chi founder Master Cheng Yen.

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The Arroyo admin is soliciting $2 billion (P100 billion) in foreign aid to rebuild after Ondoy and Pepeng. The amount looks too small. Relocating 200,000 squatter families from Metro Manila waterways alone would cost P32 billion over a decade. Then there’s a Laguna de Bay spillway that begs to be burrowed, and rivers and tributaries in Luzon that need dredging. Over 70 percent of Metro Manila’s sewers have to be unclogged of garbage and construction debris. Surrounding slopes need reforesting. In the end, all of RP might have to relocate. Over the years, the Mines & Geosciences Bureau notes, Filipinos have built their poblaciones on low ground while digging their cemeteries on hilltops. Such reverence for their dead makes Filipinos prone to floods and mudslides.

It’s unlikely the admin will raise the reconstruction money. Not only has it too little time left, but trust in it also has long run out. The Palace had announced a public-private fund-raising overseas, to be headed by tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan with Cardinal Ricardo Vidal and Finance Sec. Gary Teves. There’s been no word about it since then. Talk in Pangilinan’s camp is that he wants to divorce from usual government spending what cash the business sector is able to raise. Other industrialists prefer to wait till a new President in June taps them on the shoulder before they go all out.

Aid-solicitation initiative really is with government. But its attitude turns off donors. Like, the World Bank had offered to realign $400 million (P20 billion) in planned soft loans to rehabilitate calamity areas. But Malacañang, frowning like beggars can be choosers, insisted it wants new loans instead. The admin forgets that it is dealing with a WB country head whom its congressional allies had tried to bully into silence about fraud in roadwork loans. It overlooks too that the WB operates closely with the IMF, which is worrying of late about RP’s rising debt versus plateauing revenue collections. Will the WB still give after such rebuff?

Admin officials’ blatant cronyism and shortsightedness scandalize potential donors too. Like, it’s clear that environmental degradation — over-logging, lake pollution, swampland filling, quarrying, and over-fishing — had added to the flooding and mudslides. Yet news reaches overseas that the environment secretary has given a fellow-boxing aficionado license to cement coral reefs in supposedly pristine Boracay. And his reply to this is that the complainers are playing blind to other rapists of Mother Nature. A recent big Asian coastal event is the successive banning of sea sand exports by China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Bangladesh. But in the Cagayan province of the admin-allied Senate President, six townships are letting South Korea ship out entire beaches of sand, for a few measly dollars a ton. The only other country that allows sand traders to ruin its fisheries and shores is Myanmar. Lower presidential appointees are not to be outdone. In Metro Manila waterworks board directors have awarded themselves home lots inside La Mesa watershed-reservoir complex. Retired generals have erected mansions on public isles in Laguna’s mountaintop Lakes Caliraya and Lumot. Malacañang-friendly governors have been selling quarry and mine permits like it’s their private property. Not to forget, admin mayors ignore the National Building Code, and embrace urbanization without the requisite drainage and septic disposal.

Giving aid through the admin only ensures theft and waste. It’s no different from giving senators and congressmen P25 billion in pork barrel every year, plus P10 billion to the President. Wait a minute, government has that kind of money; so what are we asking foreign aid for?

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Take a break, says former tourism secretary Mina T. Gabor. After all the stress from Ondoy and Pepeng, she suggests entertainment and family bonding at a three-day show and sale: the 2nd International Arts & Crafts Expo. Eighteen countries are showcasing their hand-made apparel, fashion accessories, and house ware in natural fibers. Headed by Asean Handicraft Promotion & Development Association, the expo also features international and indigenous food, music and dance. Early Christmas shopping is on Oct. 26-28 at the Philtrade, CCP Complex, Pasay City.

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“A child grows in knowledge by constant questioning. An adult grows in wisdom through silence and listening.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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