THE year 2021 was a bad one for Cebu. The Covid-19 variant hit Cebu — the province and highly urbanized cities — first before moving on to ravage the rest of the country. Poverty incidence reached a level considered among the highest in the country.

As if 2021 wasn't bad enough, the Commission on Audit (CoA) discovered that Cebu City's government on June 15, 2021 advanced P199.3 million of the funds for a P1.3 billion flood mitigation project with nothing to show for it as of end of 2022. Sunstar Cebu, quoting CoA in a July 20 article, reported that the project was supposed to have been completed by Nov. 17, 2022. However, the grand project never graduated from the design phase, despite the hefty advance. The CoA auditors couldn't find any evidence of finished or ongoing construction work at any of the sites specified in the contract.