The sheer lack of experts at the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) led to the deadly water release from dams following the onslaught of the rainfall-heavy typhoon "Ulysses," former Butil party-list Rep. Cecilia Chavez said Sunday as the House of Representatives prepares to look into the seemingly avoidable tragedy.
(MANILA BULLETIN)
According to her, the country’s major dams lack competent hydrologists and engineers with expertise in administering dams. Instead, the concerned institutions are "overflowing with non-engineers and non-scientists," she said.
“At the National Irrigation Administration, for example, finding a competent hydrologist is as tough as finding a needle in a haystack,” Chavez claimed, adding that NIA is supposed to be the prime dam administrator in the country.
A hydrologist is a scientist who researches the distribution, circulation, and physical properties of the Earth's underground and surface waters.
Chavez said that dam management across the globe should led by people with post-graduate degrees in hydrology, civil engineering, sanitary engineering, and the like. She said this is simply not the case in the Philippines.
She said that the planned congressional inquiry on the unscheduled and reckless water releases from Magat Dam that took dozens of lives and destroyed property on a massive scale should focus on the staffing of the major institutions that manage the country’s dams so that reforms and corrective measures on personnel hiring can be done.
“The dams cannot be managed with expertise and competence if the people managing them are not trained for the job and lack core technical and academic competence,” Chavez said.
Chavez, a doctor, compared the management of dams without the proper expertise to "fighting COVID-19 without virologists and epidemiologists and infectious disease experts."
She said the absence of core competence within the ranks of the country’s dam administrators is probably the reason for the reckless and ill-timed water releases and the repeated violations of water release protocols from the major dams.
At least 70 people have died from typhoon Ulysses' rampaging floodwaters, the worst display of which was seen in Cagayan Valley. But the primary abettor to it is believed to be the water releases from Magat Dam, Chavez said.