Sen. Imee R. Marcos has sought legislation that would ensure adequate budgets to face the problem of water management that triggered days-long flooding and destruction caused by three successive typhoons that hit the country.
(Senate of the Philippines / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
Marcos, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs, said there is a pressing need for the installation of ‘’frameworks of administration and water management that would meet the great challenge for the next two decades for water – water supply, its management, its administration and its safety.’’
“I am hopeful that new technologies such as “sponge cities” now propagated in China and India will also be introduced in the Philippines and that we become more cognizant of all these new available technologies,’’ Marcos said in a public hearing on flood control issues presided over by Sen. Emmanuel D. Pacquiao, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Works.
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’We are here in aid of legislation, legislation that will put budgets that are adequate to face the problem and frameworks of administration and water management that will meet the great challenge for the next two decades for water – water supply, its management, its administration and its safety,’’ she added.
‘’Let me make it clear, first of all, that I am not here to lay blame at anyone's doorstep. We are not here to finger-point, but instead I think we should make the universal admission that we are all to blame,’’ she said.
Marcos said one dam that was never finished is the Magat Dam which had a Phase 2 component.
Waters from this dam project would have gone to Cagayan to irrigate to an additional 100,000 hectares.
‘’It was never finished, neither was the Parañaque Spillway or the Marikina Floodway ever completed,’’ she added.
‘’Alam po natin ‘yan, kaya wala tayong masisisi kundi ang sarili natin at di naman talaga natin tinapos ‘yung plano. After that neglect, disrepair, and abject ignorance about water management ensued, thereafter criminal activities came into play such as illegal quarrying, illegal mining, illegal fishing, and illegal logging, as if it weren't enough that we had denuded the forests and failed to dredge the rivers,’’ she stressed.
(We know that. That is why we cannot blame others but ourselves for we really did not complete the plans)
‘’I believe the issue is systemic, water management and administration in our country is fragmented. Very often, water infrastructures in the hands of many groups, some completely inapt, utterly disinterested in supply and management of water, such as Napocor (National Power Corp.) whose primary function is clearly for power,’’ she said.