Photo Courtesy: Manila PIO
As the monsoon rains return with their familiar fury, our cities once again find themselves submerged—not just in water, but in the consequences of negligence, corruption, and indiscipline.
What should be a season of renewal has become a nightmare for countless families. Streets transform into rivers, homes into lifeboats, and dreams into drenched memories. Year after year, we suffer the same fate, yet little changes. The floods are no longer acts of God—they are symptoms of a broken system.
At the root of this disaster is irresponsible waste management. Plastic clogs our drains, garbage festers in creeks, and waterways are treated like dumping grounds. Every candy wrapper thrown on the street, every sack of waste dumped into a canal, becomes part of the flood that later invades our homes.
But worse still is the rampant corruption behind flood control projects. Billions are allocated for drainage, dikes, and pumping systems—yet during every storm, they fail. Why? Because many of these structures are either substandard, delayed, or worse, non-existent. It is the ghost of graft that haunts every overflowed gutter and sunken road.
And what of discipline? Our collective disregard for rules—from illegal constructions on waterways to indifference toward waste segregation—adds to the problem. It’s easy to blame the government, but society itself must be held to account.
We can no longer afford to treat flooding as a seasonal inconvenience. It is a public health risk, an economic disaster, and a humanitarian crisis. Unless we demand transparency, enforce discipline, and embrace environmental responsibility, we will continue to drown—literally and morally.
