The single most important part of the recent State of the Nation Address was the instant the President pressed the panic button on the line bureaucracy, the crucial agencies below the line departments, and other standing commissions. The Department of Education is a case in point.

Validation appeared to be the operative word, anti-corruption pathway if you will, by which an integrated Task Force can run after grafters shortchanging government from within and without. Consider training our focus on the private sector, in this case, private schools that reportedly received refunds of awesome sums of money in the millions through fraudulent claims under a voucher program (i.e., Senior High School). Initially, the school years covered were 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Perhaps, for those running government affairs, the gospel of efficiency has been relegated to the background, if not simply taken for granted, the reason the government is readily taken advantage of.

The DepEd, under the stewardship of its secretary, has made commendable strides in the right direction in initiating investigations of those involved in recovering claims fraudulently or anomalously requested. DepEd’s anti-corruption drive led to 38 out of 54 private schools being removed from the program on justifiable grounds.

If fraud of such proportions was committed in the aforementioned school years — a timeline stretching from when Rodrigo Duterte was president to FM Jr. — it’s only axiomatic that corruption perpetuates itself across administrations unless a highly efficient recovery program and crucial validation work stops it in its tracks. It would be to Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara’s credit if this anti-corruption modality is showcased, if not replicated as a template of best practices.

It looks like collecting P100 million by way of taxation is more difficult, even anathema, to recovering that amount from fraudulent claimants as in the case of private schools that siphoned off money from the SHS voucher program. Truly, fraud as committed by the private sector confirms what the late UP Dean Francisco Nemenzo had said all along, viz: “It’s the private sector that is corrupting the public sector.”

Imagine that under this government subsidy, qualified senior high school students get to benefit from P8,750 to P22,500 per year paid directly to their preferred private school. Apparently, what started this off were the claims of 12 private schools for refunds from the government, and yet the latter found them to be questionable claims or anomalous.

Angara must have put in place a strict validation process that is capable of unearthing lists of ghost students presented by the claimant private schools.

Considering that there are other government programs in other line departments, how remote is it that public subsidies are also being siphoned off by unscrupulous private individuals, groups, or business entities? Recall this same modus operandi involving PhilHealth where private hospitals, along with their doctors request refunds, reimbursement, or repayment, some of which are fraudulent and anomalous, defrauding the government of huge amounts in public funds.

Under the Interim Reimbursement Mechanism that has been abused, some private hospitals defraud the government by seeking reimbursement for ghost patients.

Sadly, ghost flood control projects costing hundreds of billions of pesos also steal the people’s money with their phantasmal implementation. What structural or non-structural flood control measures, if any, have really been put in place? Where are the dams, the levees, flood barriers, pumping stations, floodways, dredged rivers, et cetera?

May neophyte cum game-changer Sen. Dante Marcoleta not be lost in heretofore uncharted territory toward crafting and enforcing new “binding rules” designed to cut the umbilical cord of corruption — by expediency, immediately executory.