Duterte: DPWH serious corruption; Villar cites reforms

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is rife with corruption and no construction job begins without money changing hands, President Duterte said Wednesday.

It did not provide details of the irregular transactions, but said the problem was serious.

“Projects, project engineers, all that, the way of passage, the corruption there is serious. No construction begins without a transaction, ”Duterte said in a televised address to the nation.

There are many

He said he did not know who was involved, but that there were many.

“There are so many officials lined up in the bureaucratic labyrinth that I don’t know which of them are involved, not even those on drugs and all that,” he said.

Duterte drew the attention of Congress to the corruption in the DPWH.

Senators have questioned the lump sums in DPWH’s budget, as well as its massive funding for local projects compared to national infrastructure programs.

There have also been allegations that government infrastructure projects have become a source of kickbacks or commissions that contractors pay to project proponents.

But Public Works Secretary Mark Villar enjoys Duterte’s “full trust and confidence,” according to presidential spokesman Harry Roque.

“Despite the corruption at DPWH, Secretary Villar delivered. It helps that Secretary Villar’s family has more money than DPWH, ”Roque said at a press conference.

The secretary’s father, real estate mogul Manuel Villar, a former senator, is the richest Filipino on Forbes’ billionaires list for this year, with an estimated net worth of $ 5.7 billion, or about $ 2.80 billion. Roque also said the president’s statement was intended to highlight the challenges in the remaining two years of his term, which included fighting corruption in government, especially at DPWH and at Philippine Health Insurance Corp (PhilHealth).

He added that Duterte may call for a corruption investigation at DPWH, but for the moment, he was focused on PhilHealth.

Reforms

Villar said the DPWH had taken steps to deal with corruption at the agency.

“We are one with the president’s goal to end corruption, so we take it as a challenge to institute more reforms in the department,” he said at a press conference.

DPWH has implemented a monitoring system that includes geotagging of projects, Villar said. The system allows the department to closely monitor the progress and status of projects, he added.

The department will also be stricter on contractors and has blacklisted nearly 30 of them, Villar said.

Regarding questions from senators about the lump sums in the DPWH budget, he said lawmakers could have seen the initial summary of the bills first, but the department had already presented the details of these.

Regarding local projects, Villar said that some of these can be classified as local, but they also had a national purpose. Examples of these are the roads that go to tourist sites, he said.

Multipurpose buildings

Senator Panfilo Lacson said Thursday that he would push for the realignment of DPWH’s proposed P666.47 billion budget for 2021, parts of which, he claimed, were padded to accommodate infrastructure projects by unscrupulous officials.

In a statement, the Senate hog hunter expressed satisfaction at the increase in the president’s corruption involving the “heavily abused” DPWH budget, saying it came just as the Senate was addressing the agency’s proposed funding for the next year.

“It has become an open secret that kickbacks or bribes have become the rule and not the exception in the implementation of public works projects that involve not only some corrupt department officials but also some legislators,” Lacson said.

On Wednesday, the senator marked P67 billion for the construction of “multipurpose buildings” in the DPWH budget, which is supposed to be dedicated to lifting the country out of the economic depression due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I wonder how multipurpose buildings will contribute to the ‘Reset, Bounce, Recover’ budget issue,” Lacson said when questioning Villar during a video conference budget hearing.

Lacson asked Villar about the “pattern of reducing budgets for national projects and increasing budgets for local projects.”

Legislators intervention

In the National Expenditure Program (NEP), Malacañang’s budget proposal, P131.44 billion was allocated for the development of the road network, but this was reduced by P21.45 billion to P109.99 billion in the proposed DPWH budget.

The allocation for bridge projects was reduced by P6.5 billion, funding for flood management projects was drastically reduced by P4.5 billion, and the outlay for asset preservation was cut by P9.81 billion.

Lacson said that the new budget presented by DPWH on September 7 – well beyond the deadline of the Department of Budget and Administration – was an “alteration” of the original budget contained in the NEP presented by the Palace in August. “I can no longer recognize it,” he told Villar and asked if the changes were due to “interventions by some legislators.”

Lacson described DPWH’s “amendments” to the NEP as “highly questionable.” He said the revisions should not amend the original submissions, as the revision was the exclusive function of Congress, “therefore, preparation, authorization, execution and accountability.”

Legislator manipulation

Lacson blamed corruption at the DPWH for filling in local projects, and lawmakers rigged the projects in collusion with corrupt agency officials in exchange for bribes.

He said contractors had terms for varying degrees of corruption among agency officials and lawmakers.

“Officials from the executive and legislative branches asking for only 10 percent [of the project cost] they describe themselves as kind and chivalrous; those that demand 20 to 30 percent are [called] greedy, [and] those demanding upfront payments but breaking their word [are denounced as swindlers]”Lacson said.

Read next