THE Environment department’s project to beautify Manila Bay smacks of insensitivity to the people’s difficulties in coping with the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) and contradicts President Rodrigo Duterte’s vow to spend public money judiciously, particularly in this time of pandemic.

No amount of excuses can justify the multimillion-peso rehabilitation project that includes covering a stretch of the baywalk on Roxas Boulevard with artificial white sand when around 5 million Filipinos just lost their jobs because of the community lockdown, at least 68,000 patients are fighting with Covid-19 and countless families can hardly make both ends meet.