Two current and former officials in the national government with connections to Catanduanes are in the news today.
Accused of involvement in the budget insertions in Congress is DPWH Undersecretary for Planning and Public-Private Partnership (PPP), Maria Catalina E. Cabral.
Usec. Cabral, who handles DPWH’s infrastructure planning and programming as well as PPP projects being implemented by the agency, is reportedly related to the Sarmiento clan of Virac. In the aftermath of a super typhoon that hit Virac in recent years, she reportedly send cash assistance to her cousins in the Ilawod area.
Incidentally, the first female rank-and-file employee to reach the level of undersecretary at DPWH appears to have been removed from office with the announcement that five new Usecs have been appointed to clean up the graft-ridden agency.
One of the five is former Catanduanes PNP provincial director Gen. Charles T. Calima Jr., who was the police’s Director for Intelligence when he retired in 2015 and was later appointed as the Bureau of Immigration’s acting intelligence chief in 2016.
The other four new DPWH Usecs are retired Gen. Arthur Bisnar, who in 2022 was relieved from his post as chief of the PNP directorial staff due to a complaint for grave abuse and unjust vexation filed against him by a female non-uniformed personnel; retired RTC judge and Ombudsman aspirant Atty. Benjamin Turgano, who in 2012 was found guilty of undue delay in rendering a decision on a civil and was reprimanded by the Supreme Court; former NAPOLCOM commissioner Atty. Rico Bernabe; and former Clark International Airport president Atty. Arrey Perez, who was once worked with Secretary Vince Dizon at the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA).
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Majority of the municipal engineers in the 11 towns, particularly those in Virac and Caramoran towns, which received the bulk of the DPWH’s P4.66-billion kitty for flood control projects in Catanduanes, have confirmed that the DPWH did not conduct prior consultation with their offices before the now controversial infrastructure projects were implemented by contractors.
One of them recounted to the Tribune that when the DPWH’s P9-milliom seawall project in a coastal barangay had the same length – 20 meters – as the P3-million seawall constructed by the LGU in the same barangay.
Compared to the DPWH project, the LGU seawall had no steel sheet piles, which according to a local contractor cost about P40,000 per piece.
The price difference of P6 million, however, is too large, hinting at a possible overprice for the benefit of the contractor, the politician funder and their DPWH conspirators.
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If all the contractors who implemented flood control projects from 2022 to 2024 followed the Discayas’ example and listed the senators or congressmen who benefited from the projects, only the newly elected members of Congress would remain untainted.
Those named could be forced to resign or defend themselves before the Ombudsman, which has the power to remove them from public office.
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PRAYING FOR MONEY. A businessman who needed millions of dollars to clinch an important deal went to church to pray for the money.
By chance, he knelt next to a man who was praying for $100 to pay an urgent debt.
The businessman took out his wallet and pressed $100 into the other man’s hand.
Overjoyed, the man got up and left the church.
The businessman then closed his eyes and prayed, “And now, Lord, that I have your undivided attention….”