Government misses target in funding its projects Alvin T.

Claridades September 29, 2009

The trouble with the way government prioritizes use of its funds and funding of its projects is that it seems to be missing the target more than hitting it. We have witnesses to tragedies happening one after the other and it seems government has yet to find ways to forestall the same occurring again in the future or to amply brace itself and its people up against its damaging and deadly effects. Our disaster preparedness is admittedly one hell of a disaster itself. Ondoy is just one recent name that comes to our mind when we think of calamities and disasters that have visited us of late. You have Reming, Frank, Sulpicio, and the list goes on and on and no assurance can yet be had that we will ever be prepared for another of their kind. Time and again, we have seen the best and the worst of Filipinos in the face of mishaps and tragedies. But we would be better off seeing ourselves as being able to avert the happening or mitigating the effects of natural or man-made catastrophes than just being able to calmly survive them. We must now stop relying on just beefed-up capability on search-rescue-and-retrieval and on our ever-readiness to dole out bags-of-relief-goods to victims in the aftermath of every upheaval. They are pass and do not give much relief at all. Its high time we scrape the bed of the ham drum (or pork barrel, if you may) to put our money where its really needed: the modernization of our predictive systems in PAGASA, PHIVOLCS, ATO, Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and the like. Its about time we put more premium on prevention and mitigation than on rescue and rehabilitation. We cannot just sit idly by and let disasters come and go and give our wily leaders some great photo-litical opportunities to simply lend a helping hand using our very own money.