Senator Raffy Tulfo on Thursday blasted the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) for unfinished projects despite the P121 billion allocated to them by Congress in the last six years, as lawmakers continued to grill government agencies on the reasons for widespread flooding following storms.
Tulfo said the following budget allocation given to NIA were as follows: 2017 – P15 billion, 2018-2019 – P20 billion, 2020 – P25 billion, 2021 – P19 billion, and 2022 – P22 billion.
Senators earlier this week sought hearings and planned to summon officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and other concerned agencies to shed light on their apparent failure to stop the floods, which caused at least 12 provinces to declare states of calamity last week.
Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, Majority Floor Leader Senator Joel Villanueva, and Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda had raised different long-standing issues with the country’s flood control system.
Senator Ramon Revilla Jr., chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Works and Highways, said he would summon DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairperson Romando Artes and question them about the effectiveness of their flood control programs.
Also, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on Thursday said the proposed 2024 national budget has allocated ₱216 billion for flood management projects.
Under the proposed budget, this sum will be used for the flagship flood and management program of the DPWH, which has been under fire for perennial flooding, especially across Luzon, despite its large budget for flood control projects.
For instance, nearly 2,000 residents are affected by the flooding in Sante Fe, Zambales, with officials claiming that the swollen Santo Tomas River triggered flash floods in the area.
Half a billion pesos worth of infrastructure was damaged by Typhoon Egay and the southwest monsoon in the province of Bulacan.
“It is time for us to develop a flooding management master plan,” Gov. Daniel Fernando of Bulacan said during a congressional meeting.
Fernando said the current flooding in his province was comparable to the inundation brought about by Tropical Storm Ondoy in 2009.
Meanwhile, the Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC) on Thursday said it is in talks with the DPWH to permanently solve the flooding in the Pampanga area that has created huge traffic snarls for motorists on the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX).
Rogelio Singson, MPTC president said the Pampanga River overflow is causing intense traffic to the NLEX San Simon, Pampanga area in both northbound and southbound directions.
While the Senate has been affording NIA funding for its irrigation projects, Tulfo said the agency’s irrigation development has been moving backward.
At the rate the agency was moving, he said it would take 30 years before the projects are fully developed.
He said the delayed projects violated Memorandum Circular 40 and that a majority of their projects should have been completed many years ago.
Some projects are delayed for up to more than six years, he said. Another reason was that it takes two years for every contract to expire.
There were no liquidated damages, forfeiture of performance bonds, or blacklisting of delinquent contractors, Tulfo said.
During his privilege speech, Tulfo said he already mentioned some anomalous projects.
Since then, he had dug up others, one of them being the P12-billion Balog-balog Multipurpose Project which has been there for five decades — but still failed to provide year-round irrigation to 34,410 hectares of agricultural land in 10 municipalities benefiting 23,000 farmers in Tarlac.
As of 2023, Tulfo said its contract has been terminated and is subject to bidding again. NIA has been spending P50 million a year on its repair and maintenance.
He also cited the Bulo Small Reservoir Irrigation Project in Bulacan, where construction started In 2015. It has an allocation of P990 million, which was supposed to give irrigation to 570 hectares.
He also said the Marimay Project with a starting date of 2010 and completion date of 2017 has not been finished. It had a P650 million allocation from 2015 to 2019 but only P230 million has been used to develop the project. The remaining P420 million “has been sleeping.”
“So what can we expect?” asked Tulfo as he noted that the actual accomplishment rate at NIA was just 52.73 percent.
“This project was meant to irrigate 1,178 hectares of land benefiting 608 farmers.,” he said.
The Dumuloc Project in Pangasinan with a P800 million budget has an overall accomplishment of just 1 percent.
But in the General Appropriations Act of 2023, its maintenance and operating expenses are pegged at P200 million.
The senator scored the usual practice of proposing a project, asking for huge funds, and favoring contractors.
He said they would pretend to commence projects but would leave them unfinished or use substandard construction materials.
“On top of this, there are also foreign-assisted projects under Korea — KOICA or Korean Exim Bank — these two projects are the Pampanga Integrated Disaster and Risk Resiliency Project and there’s one more, the Bulacan-Angat Water Transmission Project,” Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said in a briefing.
She also noted that because these are loans, only the government counterpart is funded — ₱1.397 billion for the project in Pampanga and ₱7.4 billion for the other one in Bulacan.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority was also allocated ₱1.3 billion for flood control projects in Metro Manila, said Pangandaman.
The DBM formally submitted the proposed ₱5.768-trillion budget to the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The latest deluge in Bulacan was brought by incessant monsoon rains enhanced by typhoons Egay and Falcon, and it was so severe that some areas in the province that have not experienced flooding in the past were hit by floodwaters.
The Bulacan provincial government declared a state of calamity due to the floods.
Governor Fernando told the ANC news channel that as of Thursday, at least four towns in Bulacan — Calumpit, Hagonoy, parts of Bocaue, and Guiguinto — were still experiencing flooding.
He said flood control measures such as the construction of dikes, upgrading drainages, and dredging of rivers were needed.
As of Wednesday, the damage to Bulacan’s infrastructure was estimated at nearly half a billion pesos.