MANILA, Philippines—Metro residents will experience less flooding this coming rainy season, according to the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority as it began stepping up its flood-control efforts.

Engineer Baltazar Melgar, chief of the MMDA’s Flood Control Management Service, yesterday said the agency started the cleanup and dredging of creeks and drainage, and prepared its 40 pumping stations for the early onset of rains.

“All our facilities are fully operational and in good condition so we expect that we can easily handle floods. We don’t expect any serious flooding except, of course, in low-lying areas that are below sea level,” Melgar said.

He said the agency’s pumping stations have proven their worth during the past weeks of intermittent rains by preventing flooding in areas normally inundated even during a slight downpour.

A good example, he said, was the newly built Abucay pumping facility in Tondo, Manila, which covers the flood-prone districts of Sampaloc and Sta. Cruz.

“If not for the 24-hour operation of the Abucay pumping station, Blumentritt, España, Dimasalang, and the surroundings areas could have gone underwater as in the past years. But we were able to keep floodwaters at its lowest levels,” he said.

The Abucay facility, which was completed early this year, is the newest of the MMDA’s 17 big pumping stations.

But the agency claimed that the presence of illegal settlers along riverbanks and creeks and the indiscriminate dumping of trash hampered their efforts to solve flooding.

Melgar urged the local government units to address the squatting and garbage problem as the MMDA’s resources were being spent there instead.

“Our pumping stations cannot work fully if these are clogged with garbage, so we have to regularly clean it up all day, all night, or else our pumps conk out. We have become garbage collectors,” he said.

Maintenance programs are done regularly and not just before the rainy season to keep Metro Manila’s drainage systems garbage-free, he added.