Urban flooding and the poor

A partylist group’s reaction to TV host Bianca Gonzales’s tweet complaint about free housing and cash assistance to indigent families living in esteros and waterways echoes similar public reaction to the perennial problem of flooding in the cities of Cebu and Mandaue.

Gonzales’ tweet was lambasted by some left-leaning partylist groups with Kabataan partylist group Rep. Terry Ridon saying they were disappointed with her response since they expect her, as a TV host of a defunct youth debate show Y Speak, to understand “national issues like poverty.”

Ridon said his group wanted to dispel the “myth” that urban poor settlers caused floods in Manila, adding that they are merely “incidental causes” and that the real culprit is the “over-extraction of ground water in the country and the formal developments of cities near river banks.”

To say that settlers are “incidental causes” of flooding and thus best ignored or tolerated while piling the blame on commercial development near rivers and urban migration is not only erroneous but sends the dangerous message that it is all right for migrants from rural areas to simply occupy any space they deem fit even if it puts at risk the safety and welfare of the tax-paying public.

Ridon qualified his point by saying that they support the relocation of settlers to safer ground.

As taxpayers who pay the salaries of partylist representatives like Ridon, the public of which Gonzales is also a part of, cannot help but feel dismayed that their money goes to providing for indigents, not a few of whom own businesses of their own along waterways, just so they can move to a place they deem to be convenient for them.

While the burden of upholding the law and achieving equitable, sustainable development falls heavily on the government, it should be shared by everyone else.

This refers to Big Business and the rich who are dangerously pushing the limits of natural boundaries and resources to further enrich themselves as well as the poor, who justify dumping garbage that clog the waterways by saying they have every right to live where they please.

Caught between these contending parties is the middle class, who pay taxes and are suffer the effects of flooding caused by both the rich and the poor.