[Rappler’s Best] Follow the money

The sun is out as we write this newsletter today, even as Severe Tropical Storm Leon prompted the weather bureau to raise Signal No. 1 in certain parts of Cagayan and Isabela in Northern Luzon, and Catanduanes in Bicol.

But first — this morning’s big news: former president Rodrigo Duterte appeared for the first time before a Senate body investigating the bloody drug war that he implemented during his presidency. Watch it here.

We have yet to recover from Severe Tropical Storm Kristine, which battered provinces south of Luzon last week, affecting at least 4.1 million residents and causing the death of 81. A flood of images from soaked communities once again pricked our conscience and pockets, while rescue and relief efforts leveled up because, after all, local and national candidates are wooing our votes for the May 2025 elections.

The truth is, billions of pesos are allotted annually for disasters, which allow both national and local agencies to build necessary projects to mitigate harm and institutionalize relief and rescue. Of course, this can never be enough as the world battles a climate crisis and as the Philippines continues to be one of the most climate-vulnerable countries.

But it becomes a double tragedy when Filipinos are made to suffer because leaders either misused or did not use funds meant to protect them from harm, and then they are forced to make a beeline later before elected officials for rescue and relief. It should make us sick in the stomach.

• A November 2023 study by Oxfam showed that a total of P118.4 billion of Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) funds were unspent from 2016 to 2020, according to this Rappler story. Check details of the Oxfam report here.
• Most of the underspending happened at the local level, at the national government agencies, and even that of the agencies’ Quick Response Funds (QRF) — which are allotted huge sums every year to prepare for and manage disasters.
• Oxfam said that from 2017 to 2020, local governments did not spend at least P124 billion, or more than half, of their local DRRM Funds.
• What are the reasons for underspending? Oxfam has a list from its analysis of Commission on Audit reports.
• Generals from the Philippine National Police, for instance, have been found liable for buying unusable rubber boats worth P131 million.

We deserve better than all this blame-tossing from elected officials and lamentations about resources. (Read our editorial on this: Disaster mitigation and learned helplessness.)

Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman’s claim is misplaced when she highlighted on Friday, October 25, that the national disaster fund is down to P1.9 billion for the remainder of the year. The bureaucracy is oozing with deployable funds, as she herself has said in the same press conference: 

• The QRF is a built-in pre-disaster or standby fund that various government agencies — public works, agriculture, defense, education, social welfare, others — can use to assist affected areas.
• Assuming this gets depleted, the budget chief said all government departments, bureaus, offices, and agencies are required to use a portion of their budget for disasters. The Department of Public Works and Highways has a balance of P4.38 billion this year from that fund, she said.
• And then there’s the Bureau of Treasury, which agencies can access for some emergencies. Not to mention the massive confidential and intelligence funds of the national government, for which one needs only to submit basic receipts (or even invented ones, as the reality goes.)

Are Filipinos aware that the law obligates the setting aside of no less than 5% of the Internal Revenue Allotment for local government units (LGUs) to disaster preparedness, management and mitigation? This alone should be a key issue as politicians prepare to press palms for the May 2025 elections. 

Are the LGUs spending disaster funds from taxpayers’ money? If so, are they spending them wisely? What are LGUs doing each year to help villages prepare for disasters? And what equipment and tools are they buying to make them deal with these disasters when they strike?

Environment Secretary Toni Yulo-Loyzaga conceded that localizing disaster risk reduction continues to be the biggest challenge not only in the Philippines, but also in the rest of Asia-Pacific. At the closing of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Manila two weeks ago, key officials agreed that local governments have varying levels of competence, commitment, and topography in dealing with disasters. 

Ultimately, the fight against disasters will either be won — or lost — at the level of cities, said UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction head Kamal Kishore. – Rappler.com

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