Politicians from both houses of Congress issued statements welcoming the appointment of former Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon as the new chief of the scandal-plagued Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
The honorable senators and representatives all expressed hope that Dizon’s stint would bring about long-overdue reforms and stamp out corruption in the agency.
They chorused that while there would be immense challenges, his turn at heading an agency known for pervasive graft and corruption would be an excellent opportunity to confront the deeply entrenched problems at DPWH.
Senate President Francis Escudero, who has been dragged into the flood control controversy after admitting having received P30 million from one of the top 15 contractors during the campaign, said “rooting out corruption is just the first step” and assured that the Senate was ready to support reforms to ensure all DPWH projects serve their purpose and improve the lives of Filipinos.
The senator, much pilloried by the public for delaying the recent impeachment proceedings, is correct but he would be wrong if the reforms he wants to see are limited to DPWH and other government infrastructure agencies.
A reading of the news reports on the relief of Sec. Manuel Bonoan and his replacement by Dizon shows that at least one House representative, Kamanggagawa partylist Rep. Elijah San Fernando, got it right.
He warned that the flood control scheme cannot succeed without a “syndicate” operating inside the DPWH—a network of DPWH officials, state auditors, contractors, and legislators from both the House and the Senate.
Dizon alone cannot resolve such “well-orchestrated corruption,” San Fernando stressed.
Advocating workers’ rights and labor reforms, the partylist group won a seat in the 2025 midterm elections after having missed out in 2022 under its old name Alternatiba.
Thus, it is not among the established partylist groups whose representatives have been indicted for involvement in the Napoles NGO scams and have earned, like the regular congressmen, their own reputation for receiving kickbacks from infra projects.
The corruption begins at the top, where Congress leaders apportion unprogrammed funds, the money which the government has yet to earn, to favored senators and representatives who then identify the type of projects and their locations without so much as a whisper to the local leaders.
The projects are then given to their chosen contractors, either owned by family members or friends.
So used to the transactions, even some of these contractors have their own planning units which prepare the project’s plans and the programs of work which are submitted to the DPWH for adoption.
There is no need to ask if the cost estimates are not bloated.
After all, everybody has to have their share of the booty, from the honorable elective senator or congressman down to the DPWH director, project engineer and even the auditor tasked with ensuring that every peso allotted for the project is spent properly.
All, except the citizens of the recipient barangay who will have to live with the consequences of having a flood control project built with only 40 percent of its funding.
While public officials and their contractors live comfortably well enough to stay above the flood, ordinary Filipinos have to wade through the dirty water on their way to daily-wage jobs at the risk of contracting leptospirosis.
Clearly, the reforms should not start with DPWH alone; they should be undertaken at both houses of Congress as well as the Commission on Audit (COA).
Limiting the necessary changes to the DPWH is just like cutting off a finger from a rotting arm.