MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine president and Congress have begun looking into possibly massive corruption in flood control projects that may implicate public works officials and engineers, construction firms and politicians in one of the countries most vulnerable to typhoons.
The House of Representatives infrastructure committee opened a nationally televised hearing Tuesday. The Senate’s powerful blue ribbon committee resumed on Monday a separate inquiry, where senators grilled a private contractor who has denied any wrongdoing but faced intense questioning over her family’s fleet of at least 28 luxury cars and SUVs.
Rep. Elajiah San Fernando said that given the huge budget allocated for flood control infrastructure and water resource development in the Philippines, including more than 308 billion pesos ($5.4 billion) this year, the scale of the corruption could be “of the grandest kind.”
Addressing construction companies, private contractors and politicians involved in anomalies or “ghost projects,” San Fernando warned that Congress has “no other objective but to see your heads rolling, to hold you into account and lock you up in jail.”
In July, back-to-back typhoons and seasonal monsoon downpours set off massive floods that affected millions of people, displaced more than 300,000 others, damaged nearly 3,000 houses and left extensive infrastructure and agricultural losses. At least 26 people died in the weather onslaught.
“When it floods, it’s not the wealthy engineers or politicians or senators or congressmen or contractors living in mansions with dozens of SUVs who suffer,” San Fernando said. “When flood control fails, the ordinary Filipino gets to be hurt first.”
Another House member, Walfredo Dimaguila Jr., blamed past public works officials for poorly planned projects that aimed to ease the flooding in metropolitan Manila but have caused frequent flooding in his province of Laguna, south of the capital. He presented video footage showing school buildings and houses engulfed in recent knee-deep floodwaters. Villagers wade through the water and others row their way aboard small wooden boats along flooded streets.
After inspecting provincial flood control projects in recent weeks and discovering substandard quality and other anomalies, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Monday that he would form an independent commission to investigate the corruption that likely has hounded such projects and file criminal charges against those responsible.
Marcos said more than 6,000 of the 9,000 flood control projects implemented so far in his more than three years in office have inadequate or unusual specifications that should be looked into. A website launched by the president to allow people to report potential anomalies has been swamped with complaints.
“I’m getting very angry,” Marcos told reporters after an Aug. 20 inspection of a riverbank concreting project in flood-prone Bulacan province, north of Manila. The project has been reported as completed, but no work has been done, Marcos said.
In Monday’s Senate inquiry, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada expressed suspicion on how private contractor Sarah Discaya, a former dental clinic receptionist and nurse abroad, managed to grow rich over the years after she and her husband ventured into the construction business and won a large number of government contracts, including many flood control projects.
“This is unbelievable,” Estrada said after Discaya acknowledged owning at least 28 of the world’s most expensive cars. “It’s only now that I’ve heard of one person or a couple owning such a big number of very expensive cars.”
Under intense questioning, Discaya repeatedly denied that she and the nine construction companies she owned with her husband resorted to corruption and bribery to win contracts from the Department of Public Works and Highways. The department, which oversees the country’s infrastructure projects, has been hounded by allegations of corrupt deals for years.
Discaya and her husband face no specific allegations of wrongdoing.
Another private contractor, Mark Allan Arevalo, was asked by senators if his company had “ghost” flood control projects, but the man bowed his head and refused to answer questions, invoking his “right against self-incrimination.”
There has been a growing sense of alarm in the Philippines over corruption and flood control anomalies, with a Catholic Church leader, Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, urging young Filipinos to “expose injustice” and to “make corruption shameful again.”
