President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has all the reasons to be disappointed and to be very angry after he found out first-hand that a supposedly completed and fully paid P55 million-river project in Baliuag, Bulacan, did not even have started.
He was deceived and believed that his government had completed more than 5,500 flood control projects in the first two years from July 2022 to May 2024, as he praised himself in his third state of the nation (Sona) in July 2024.
With a bad luck two days later, Super Typhoon Carina (international name: Typhoon Gaemi) and improved the Southwest Monsun or the “Hagagat”, which caused the worst floods of Metro Manila in recent years. At the height of the widespread floods, Internet users mocked Marcos and questioned the existence of these projects, describing “ghost projects”, which were financed by public funds.
Maria Catalina E. Cabral, the DPWH Unterstate Secretary for Planning, Public Private Partnership and Information Management Services, confirmed the President's explanation and bragged more than 5,000 more than 5,000 further progress in a news forum. That was more than a year ago. DPWH should have completed around 8,000 of these projects due to the supposed achievement rate. But where exactly are these projects?
Cabral had attributed the overpopulation and the overcapacity of the drainage systems, which were not on non -existent flood protection projects. In fact, she said that the floods in Metro Manila could be worse if it were not for the government's flood control projects.
The president admitted that he had found “lately” from the “ghosts” projects and assured that they now “validate intensively”.
On August 11, the President announced in a press conference that a fifth of the financing of 545 billion pesets for flood control projects since the beginning of his administration had only been applied, while more than 6,000 projects did not provide any details of the type of construction work they have covered.
On August 19, Senator Rodante Marcoleta, Chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, made it clear during his first investigation that the actual budget for flood control projects from July 2022 to May 2025 P849 billion and the P545 millions mentioned by Marcos, which were only referred to the 15 means given to the top 15 contract.
The House of Representatives will investigate the committees on public accounts, public work and motorways as well as the good government and public accountability that are alleged by politicians who allegedly received setbacks, looked at the public bidders or the companies that did the million dollar government contracts to be controlled.
Legislators should be able to refute doubts that the investigation in view of the claims that a number of these ghost projects were financed by the insertion of congressions in the DPWH budget would be objective. Others said it could only serve as a platform for legislators to defend themselves against corruption companies.
In the hope that all of these investigations will find out the accountability obligation in and from the government and give them an appropriate punishment.
The Investigators May Want to Take A Look AT the 2008 Report of the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity, A Unit Tasked to Investigate Frau and Corruption in WB-Funded Projects, Where Where Was Alleged That A Cartel Composed of Private Contractors and Public Works Officials Has Been “Institutionalized and HAS Operated with impunity for at least a decade, Possibly Longer, “On Account of the“ Systemic Corruption and Bid Rigging ”in the Philippine Public Works Sector.
From the news about the fictional flood control projects, the pattern looked similar to the projects financed by WB by the DPWH. Part of the WB report said: “With 20 to 30 percent of each of these contracting packages, payments to government officials, other antitrust participants and other people should be covered up in order to cover up the operations of the cartel in order to derive corrupt payments.”
At that time, the Senate Committee Blue Ribbon examined the anomal projects for public work. In a hearing, Senator Panfilo Lacson gave a contractor for the claim of a cash contained in a cardboard box, which he supposedly delivered to the then gentleman Mike Arroyo in the FTA building in Makati City in 2004. This contractor was for those starved by the World Bank.
When Rogelio Singson was a public employment office, he overtook the procurement and administrative systems and procedures at the DPWH to clean the agency, which was marked as the most corrupt state institution in a pulse Asia survey from 2009.
In the same year, World Bank ignited five construction companies and two of its owners because they had punished a number of bidders for bank financing projects.
Singson has also converted DPWH officials to prevent them from “reducing” the possibilities for summarizing with them with contractors and suppliers, and replacing others with serious defects and pending complaints or cases.
After Singson left the DPWH, it seems that “happy days” are not only for public work and private contractors, but also for corrupt politicians.