YOUR TOLL MONEY AT WORK
[Commentary]
Filipinos pay for roads twice: once through taxes, again through tolls. And still walk home in floodwater.
Tuesday night. Southbound SLEX, near Kawasaki in Alabang. A sudden downpour, and the tollway turned into a glorified fishpond.
"Triny naming bumaba sa bus at lakarin na lang papuntang toll gate ng Alabang, kaso hindi kinayang lakarin dahil lagpas gulong na ang baha,” wrote Sherilyn Santos in the Facebook post.
It wasn’t even a storm. Yet the crown jewel of San Miguel’s infrastructure empire drowned like it had never met a drainage pipe.
Was a San Miguel rep wading through that water, like their profit margins wade through the stock exchange? They privatize tolls, but nationalize failure. Their contract says “maintenance.” The photo says: You get what you get.
DPWH, MMDA, the LGUs: They all have jurisdiction. But PPP agreements have mutated into shields. The state won’t act because “it’s the operator’s job"? The operator won’t act because no one makes them?
Every day, SLEX charges drivers for the privilege of risk. No rebates when it floods. No accountability for delays. But miss a toll? You’re fined. Capitalism at its most parasitic: premium rates for barangay-level infrastructure.
They sell a future of sleek mobility, then deliver roads that collapse in light rain. They collect like a public utility but do they answer to no one when things fail?
A flooded expressway isn’t mere nuisance. It’s a stress test of the state. And it failed. Not just poor drainage, but a full collapse of responsibility.
Did the corporation serve? Did the government protect? Because every barefoot step a commuter took through that filthy water was one more step away from believing this country works at all.
| 📸 Sherilyn Santos
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