MANILA — Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Vince Dizon on Monday defended the Marcos administration’s anti-corruption campaign within the agency, pointing to ongoing criminal cases, institutional reforms, and personnel changes nearly a year after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. publicly condemned alleged anomalies in flood control projects.
The administration, Dizon said, has continued to pursue accountability while implementing reforms designed to prevent similar irregularities from recurring. Last year, Marcos denounced the alleged corruption in his State of the Nation Address after severe flooding exposed questionable infrastructure spending, telling the officials involved they should be ashamed.
Dizon said the effort has focused on both prosecuting those responsible and reforming the system. “The president himself is responsible for exposing this huge and outrageous theft of funds from our countrymen last year. He himself said in front of congressmen, in front of senators, in front of the people, that you should be ashamed of what happened,” he said. Residents in flood-hit communities, he added, continue to demand both accountability and solutions. “I myself was there… Our countrymen are really pitiful. And rightly so, they are demanding for accountability. And more than accountability, they are demanding solutions.”
Dizon said Marcos had instructed law enforcement agencies to pursue cases wherever the evidence leads. “The president is relentless in his efforts to first of all answer what should be answered, whoever it is, where the evidence is going,” he said, noting that the same message had been given to the Ombudsman, the Department of Justice, and all law enforcement agencies.
Suspected Projects Under Review
Dizon said authorities initially identified more than 400 suspected ghost flood control projects, of which roughly 60 to 70 percent have already been reviewed and referred to the Office of the Ombudsman. He said more than 200 flood control-related cases are currently active, while more than 100 individuals are either detained or undergoing case build-up. The DPWH, he added, assists the Ombudsman, the DOJ, and the Commission on Audit by gathering the documents and evidence needed for prosecution.
Market Prices
Beyond the criminal cases, Dizon outlined several reforms introduced within the agency. One major change, he said, involved revising official construction material prices to match prevailing market rates. “The main source of fraud is overpricing,” he said. “It’s been decades, and the price of DPWH materials is always higher than the price of other developers such as SM and others. We’ve changed that. We lowered the price of DPWH to match the market price.” The new pricing standards have been publicly posted, he added, making them harder to reverse, since they are now known to the public and to non-government organisations alike. Projects, he said, are also now required to have complete engineering plans and documentation before receiving funding. “Everything must be documented. Everything must have proof of documents.”
Underperforming Officials
The reforms, Dizon said, also include replacing underperforming officials, with district engineers who fail to comply set to be removed. “If they don’t want to, they will be removed,” he said. Procurements are now published online and monitored by NGOs, he added, noting that the agency had signed agreements not only with civil society groups but also with the church, including the CBCP, and with local organisations to help oversee the process.
Romualdez Referral
Dizon also addressed questions about the Ombudsman’s supplemental complaint involving former House Speaker Martin Romualdez, rejecting suggestions that investigators had acted only recently. The DPWH, he said, had submitted documents recommending criminal charges months earlier. “I will just remind you and maybe the public that in November, we already filed a referral recommending charges of plunder, bribery, and other crimes against the former speaker and former congressman Zaldy Co,” he said. He declined to discuss the evidence in detail, saying the matter is now before the Ombudsman, and noted that Congress holds the power to change the contents of the budget.
Asked whether he believed Romualdez could eventually be arrested, Dizon said he trusts the President’s commitment to follow the evidence. “I believe that our President will prove what he said, that whoever it is, my son, my friend, my ally, whoever it is, where the evidence will go, that’s where we will go.”
Flood Control Remains a Priority
Dizon said the DPWH continues to prioritise repairing damaged flood control infrastructure, particularly in Bulacan, and has already begun fixing defective structures. “We are fixing it. In fact, we started fixing it already several months ago. In May, we started closing the gaps,” he said. The core problem before, he explained, was that substandard flood control works had been built with gaps through which water could pass.
Dizon added that Marcos has instructed Cabinet officials to stay focused on governance despite the political controversies. “What the president wants and what he has told all of us in the cabinet is he just wants to focus on the work,” he said. “Our priority is to address the major difficulties and hardships that our people are facing. And that is what we are doing and that is what we will do.”
