Malacañang recently made a grand assurance that the proposed P3.06 billion allocation for evacuation centers under the 2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP) will strictly serve its purpose.

Palace Press Officer Claire Castro insisted that explicit institutional guardrails under the Ligtas Pinoy Centers Act are firmly in place to eliminate the notorious plague of “ghost projects”.

On paper, this sounds like a massive victory for disaster preparedness. But for the ordinary Filipino who has weathered decades of storm surges and broken political promises, it is impossible not to meet this news with heavy skepticism.

With an election season looming just around the corner, we must ask: Is this budget a genuine shield against the elements, or is it a thinly veiled campaign fund?

The administration claims that the selection of these sites is entirely data-driven and rooted in real disaster risks. Yet history has taught the public to fear a different reality. Once these funds cascade down to the grassroots level, do they actually materialize into sturdy structures? Or do they morph into substandard concrete walls loudly painted with the names and faces of local politicians?

Year after year, billions of pesos vanish into flood control and disaster mitigation projects. The government routinely boasts that the loopholes have been plugged. But if these initiatives are truly working, why do our streets still turn into muddy rivers at the first downpour? Why do thousands of displaced families still find themselves crammed into open-air basketball courts where a single piece of rusty roofing is their only protection?

The real issue here is no longer just about “ghost projects” that do not exist. The modern threat is what the public calls “ampaw” infrastructure—hollow, substandard projects that exist physically but are completely empty of quality. We are tired of seeing newly built dikes crack within months, or evacuation centers whose roofs peel off during the very first typhoon.

Having a physical structure to show off in an accomplishment report is not enough. The Filipino people deserve resilient, reliable infrastructure designed to protect human dignity and withstand the test of time—not temporary Band-Aids engineered to secure government contracts or pad campaign portfolios.

The money funding these projects comes from the literal sweat and taxes of hard-working citizens. It should buy them absolute safety, not front-row seats to a political reality show.

Disaster funds deal in the currency of human lives. Malacañang must ensure that these multi-billion peso promises hold real substance, because when the next supertyphoon hits, empty words cannot keep our people dry.