Calumpit, Bulacan Mayor Glorime “Lem” Faustino on Thursday expressed her exasperation at watching her town drown again and again.

During every typhoon, the waters rise and homes are submerged, yet the long-promised flood control projects that could have provided relief never arrived.

“Here in Calumpit, every time there’s a typhoon, we always get flooded. It happens all the time,” she said in a radio interview.

“What’s painful is that, as the mayor of Calumpit, we’ve been victims again and again, and yet we’re still being victimized,” she said.

Faustino said supposed flood control projects in her municipality were never coordinated with the local government.

Not once, she said, did contractors reach out. When municipal engineers tried to inquire, they were told the projects were solely the responsibility of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

“Not a single contractor has ever reached out to us in Calumpit,” she said. After inspecting the supposed project sites, she found no evidence of real progress.

“Flood control projects would be very beneficial to our town of Calumpit — if only they are done properly and correctly. If only the budgets are properly allocated for the flood control projects,” she said.

Just 20 kilometers away, Baliwag City officials voiced the same frustration after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. personally flagged a P55-million DPWH flood control project in Barangay Piel as a ghost undertaking.

The city government immediately distanced itself from the project. “These ghost projects were funded, implemented, and paid for by the DPWH,” the city said in a statement.

Billion-peso drain

It stressed that no coordination was ever made with the local government, and no documents were submitted to the City Engineering Office.

“The city government condemns and thwarts any kind of malicious projects since large chunks of the budget are wasted and abused,” the statement read.

Officials promised tighter coordination with national agencies to ensure accountability, while backing Marcos’s push to expose and punish those behind the anomalies.

The fury of the local officials comes as investigations revealed billions of pesos wasted on flood control projects that either never materialized or were abandoned midstream.

In Bulacan’s First District alone, P9.49 billion was funneled into supposed flood control works from 2022 to 2025, many of which were later flagged as ghost projects.

Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan had confirmed that Wawao Builders was awarded 85 projects totaling P5.97 billion, while SYMS Construction secured 16 projects worth almost P1 billion in Bulacan.

Several projects have been declared non-existent or defective.

Senator Rodante Marcoleta, chair of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigating the anomalies, confirmed that ghost projects had been reported in Calumpit, Hagonoy, and Malolos — all within the district of Rep. Danilo “Danny” Domingo.

Silent

Both Domingo and 2nd District Rep. Tina Pancho have remained silent on the issue, while Bulacan Governor Daniel Fernando claimed no knowledge of the projects, telling reporters: “Wala akong alam (I know nothing).”

The fiasco in Bulacan ties into the broader corruption pattern exposed by Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who on Thursday delivered a searing privilege speech unveiling what he called a “CORRUPTIONary” — a dictionary of coded terms used to disguise systemic kickbacks in public works.

Among the terms: “distinct,” referring to duplicate budget items serving as earmarks; “reseta,” a two to three percent kickback for district engineering offices; “passing through” or “parking fee,” a five to six percent cut for local politicians; and “funders,” who pocket 20 to 25 percent of the project costs for inserting them in the national budget.

“This is well orchestrated by an organized network of people who abuse their power,” Lacson said, pointing to a “syndicate” in Bulacan’s DPWH office that uses borrowed contractors’ licenses to justify non-existent projects. By his estimate, P1.9 trillion has been lost to corruption in flood control projects nationwide over 15 years.

For residents of Bulacan’s flood-prone towns, the numbers translate to ruined crops, submerged homes, and shattered trust.

Mayor Faustino said the betrayal stings most because communities already drowning in floodwaters are now drowning in false promises, too.

“It is disheartening that aside from being victims of flooding, we are also victims of anomalous flood control projects,” she said.

For Baliwag, the city pledged to help the President expose the scam and called for closer scrutiny moving forward.