EVERY YEAR, the same story repeats itself across Western Visayas: torrential rains, submerged streets, and thousands of evacuees seeking dry ground. This cycle of flooding has become so routine that it now borders on the absurd — not because nature is unpredictable, but because government planning remains chronically predictable in its failure.
The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) has already sounded the alarm. Its latest figures paint a familiar but damning picture: nearly 355,000 individuals displaced, with Iloilo and Capiz among the hardest hit. These numbers should have been declining by now, not climbing. After all, billions of pesos have already been poured into flood control and drainage projects over the past decade. So, why does the region still drown with every season’s rain?
The uncomfortable answer lies in weak oversight and misplaced priorities. Many local flood mitigation projects, particularly in urban centers like Iloilo City and Roxas City, are marred by poor planning, substandard execution, or incomplete implementation. Canals are built without proper outfalls, pumping stations are left unmaintained, and drainage systems end up serving as catchments for garbage rather than conduits for runoff.
National agencies, particularly the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), must shoulder part of the blame. Multi-million-peso drainage projects look impressive on paper but crumble under scrutiny — either because they fail to address the actual hydrology of their surroundings or because maintenance is conveniently left to underfunded local governments once construction ends. The result: a cityscape of shiny new drains that don’t drain.
Local government units (LGUs), for their part, cannot simply plead lack of resources. The Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (LDRRMF) exists precisely for pre-disaster mitigation. Yet many LGUs still spend disproportionately on relief and rehabilitation instead of prevention. Year after year, they “prepare” by stocking up on food packs instead of unclogging culverts and enforcing no-build zones along waterways.
What Western Visayas needs is not another ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new drainage project, but a regional audit of all existing flood control infrastructures — a public, transparent accounting of what works and what doesn’t. DPWH Region 6 and provincial engineers must jointly evaluate the capacity, design, and current condition of these systems. The findings should not be buried in internal reports but disclosed to the public, barangay by barangay.
At the same time, LGUs must adopt stricter urban drainage management policies. Building permits should now require developers to integrate stormwater management designs — not merely decorative retention ponds — and homeowners’ associations should be made co-responsible for maintaining shared waterways. Accountability must flow from top to bottom.
Floods are no longer acts of God; they are failures of governance. As La Niña looms once again, the question is not whether it will rain — it’s whether our leaders will finally ensure that the water has somewhere to go.
Because until drainage planning and project accountability become as routine as the floods themselves, Western Visayas will keep reliving the same storm, year after year.
