Bulacan folk: ‘Corruption took away our farms’
CALUMPIT, BULACAN—Farmers in this town could not help but be dismayed when they learned that the flood control project that could have protected their fields from rising seawater went into corruption instead.
“We are the farmers who do not have land to till. Our rice farms have been submerged into flood waters for many years. Thinking flood is caused alone by climate change… we have accepted it. But then it was not. Corruption did this to us by the people in the government.” These searing words came from Gerry De Guzman, leader of farmers group in the town, when he spoke during the candle-lighting rally at El Mercado De Calumpit here, attended by 4,000 local folks on Sunday night.
“Rice farming is our livelihood, is our way of life, but we adopted, we shifted to being tricycle drivers. Recently, we made simple bancas to earn, and then motorized boats” that have now become a mode of transport for residents in the town, he said.
For Calumpit folk like De Guzman, it has become a daily ordeal to live through the constant flood, with seawater having turned their communities into a “seaworld”
Ships, next?
De Guzman said they became tricycle drivers after they lost their farms but the level of high tide flood became even higher, forcing them to shift to “tikling,” the elongated type of tricycle intended for the flooded roads.
Bu even tikling didn’t work anymore with still rising seawater. That was then they began acquiring bancas as means of livelihood.
“Should we wait for the time that we will build ships or we should just leave and go,” he said in tears.
De Guzman said he was now consumed with anger when the news broke out about the massive corruption in government flood control projects that would have protected their lands.
He said he, and others farmers like him, could only hope that the government leaders would fulfill their promise to clean the bureaucracy of its corrupt officers and personnel, and prosecute and jail the culprits.
“We are hoping that this will not end here in this protest rally, we are hoping that there will be solutions; that we can go back to what we have been praying for, to go back tilling our lands because being farmers is the only work we know,” he added.
Rise up
According to Vice Mayor Zacarias Cabdelaria, the fist to speak in the rally, it had been over a year since he last saw a dry land in his town’s coastal communities.
Mayor Lem Laustino, who initiated the protest rally, rued that had the people behind the flood control projects in Calumpit only truthfully and honestly built these retaining walls, the town would be dealing with up to 5 to 7 feet of seawater during high tide.
At present, only four inland barangays of the town’s 29 villages have not been affected by rising seawater.
For one, Sitio Nabong in Barangay Meysulao, the village in the town that is adjacent Macabebe town in Pampanga, has now become an “island,” where people can only leave their houses using bancas.
Faustino said she stood up for the time against fellow government officials and politician because she needed to fight corruption and demand accountability for the anomalies that beset control projects that could have saved her beloved town of Calumpit .
“Rise up Calumpit. I am not afraid of anyone, be it a partymate or a friend. They should be the ones who should fear us,” she said.
Faustino said Calumpit was allotted P2.1 billion for 46 flood control projects from 2022-2025.
When she was first elected in 2022, she exhausted all her efforts in writing letters and meeting with al the vital people to solve the perennial flooding in Calumpit, only to later learned that funds supposedly meant for these projects lined the pockets of corrupt government officials.
She said she was told that the flood retaining work in the coastal village of Meyto had a budget of P60 million but she later learned that there were “hidden” P180 million allocations in two phases for Meyto that were never used for the project.
President Marcos had visited and exposed the sloppy and ghost flood control projects in Barangays Bulusan and Frances in Calumpit on Aug. 15, where he started to uncover the ghost flood control projects not just in Bulacan but also in many other parts of the country.
At least four officers of the Department of Public Works and Highways in Bulacan’s first engineering district engaged in anomalous flood control projects had been dismissed by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon.
