Tightening the disaster fund is the easy part

Atty. Melissa Banias runs the Office of Civil Defense division that vets how Western Visayas towns spend their disaster money. So when she calls the Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund “prone to abuse,” with money charged to activities that were never in the plan, it sounds and feels more than a routine gripe.

Tighter review is overdue in a region that sits square in the typhoon corridor and rides out something like 20 cyclones a year. But a cleaner approval process is not the same thing as communities that are actually ready.

Take the number the agency offered as proof of progress: 53 local disaster plans approved across Western Visayas in 2025. In a region of roughly a hundred cities and municipalities, now that Negros Occidental has moved to its own region, that is hardly a win. An approved plan certifies that paperwork matches guidelines. It does not certify that a fourth-class town in interior Antique can move families off a floodplain at two in the morning.

That is where the tightening gets complicated. Banias admitted it herself: fourth- to sixth-class municipalities have far less to work with than wealthier first- to third-class LGUs. A stricter gate does not close that gap. It can widen it. The towns most exposed to the next storm are often the ones least able to write a plan that survives review, and sending them back to revise is not the same as helping them prepare.

But the bigger problem is often not misused money but money that is never used. In its special audit of 2024 disaster funds, the Commission on Audit flagged 70 LGUs for utilization as low as 1.41 percent — one Metro Manila city sat on PHP 2.124 billion — and named Capiz, here in Western Visayas, among the provinces that barely spent. COA has long traced this to fear: officials sit on the fund because a disallowance might follow if they spend it. Tighten the screws without touching that fear, and you get more caution, not more culverts.

Which makes the timing awkward. In September 2025, President Marcos signed Republic Act No. 12287, the Declaration of State of Imminent Disaster Act, built on Albay’s hard lesson that you spend before the storm, not after the funeral. Anticipatory action runs on a three- to five-day window. A review layer designed to slow spending is, by design, at odds with a law designed to speed it up.

None of this is an argument for looser rules, but for smarter ones. Pair every review team with real planning support for the towns that cannot go it alone. Publish which LGUs are underspending, not only which ones misspent. Fast-track anticipatory measures so the paperwork does not outlast the forecast. Oversight that only knows how to say no is doing half the job.