Safer, more beautiful Philippines

Benjamin D. Diokno in Business World (Philippines): As the world economy slows and undergoes severe adjustment problems in the next three to five years, it may be an excellent opportunity for the Philippines to make up for lost ground.

Philippine public infrastructure lags many years behind its ASEAN-5 neighbors. And given the country’s high vulnerability to damaging natural disasters, the next five years may be an excellent opportunity for the country to enhance its disaster preparedness and to build a stronger, more beautiful country.

...But as a people, Filipinos have short memories. Remember Ondoy and Pepeng. In addition to close to a thousand deaths, Ondoy and Pepeng combined was the costliest natural calamity in recent Philippine history. The combined cost of damage brought about by the twin typhoons reached P38 billion, of which P11 billion came from Ondoy and P27 billion from Pepeng.
Damage to infrastructure (roads and bridges, flood control structures, health facilities and schools) was estimated at P 11.1 billion. Damage to agriculture and fisheries were estimated at P23.6 billion as of November 5, 2009, Some 213,000 houses were destroyed.

...Metropolitan Manila today is as vulnerable to an Ondoy-like event as it was two years ago. Nothing has changed, except the faces of political leaders and top bureaucrats.

Now comes Sendong. Official death toll from it stands at 1,258 with many more still believed missing. It was the worse calamity to hit the country in terms of loss of human lives since the 1991 flooding and landslides in Ormoc where some 5,000 people died. What happens next? After the blame game and the political grandstanding, will the Iligan-Cagayan de Oro disaster be forgotten too?...