EDITORIAL - Season rhetoric

As the death toll from monsoon rains and floods soared to 92, Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson announced yesterday that up to 195,000 families living in flood-prone high-risk zones would be relocated immediately. Briefing reporters at Malacañang, Singson said the order was given by President Aquino.

Once the shanties are dismantled, the next task is to see to it that the affected families won’t return just as quickly to their former informal settlements. Waterways were supposed to have been cleared of shanties long before typhoon “Ondoy” in 2009. But many people who are relocated eventually leave their new homes, for various reasons particularly the lack of employment opportunities – the usual reason they migrate to urban centers in the first place. Many relocation sites also lack education and health care facilities. Unless these basic needs are addressed, people will keep leaving relocation sites and returning to urban areas, even if it means building shanties along the path of floods.

While they’re at it, authorities should also look into residential, commercial, industrial and even government buildings that have been constructed over creeks and other waterways. Informal settlers are not the only ones that have dammed up natural drains all over Metro Manila and neighboring areas. Barangay personnel are supposed to prevent such illegal constructions, but in several areas, barangay outposts themselves are blocking waterways and aggravating flooding.

Local government executives, including barangay officials, are tasked by law to prevent squatting. Yet even before the end of every rainy season, waterways where floods have washed away informal settlements are soon teeming again with shanties.

In the aftermath of last week’s torrential flooding, and with many more typhoons ahead, the public is again hearing a lot of official noise about clearing waterways of informal settlements and obstructions. President Aquino should order his officials to ensure that the noise goes beyond seasonal rhetoric.