President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s promise to finally end the flood crisis has highlighted something all too familiar — greedy unscrupulous officials and their contractor allies turning the government into a cash cow.

The story is an old one.

The shady business owners take most of the heat, while the real rot — the bureaucrats and power players signing off on every deal — are quietly overlooked. Because the truth is no multibillion-peso contract ever gets awarded without someone in authority giving the green light.

The Top 15 circle

As we dug into the mechanics of the bidding and awarding of projects, one phrase kept surfacing: the “top 15 contractors list.”

On paper, the rules are clear. The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) even has a thick manual spelling out every requirement a bidder must meet. Yet in practice, compliance is treated like an option.

One former procurement official explained it plainly: contracts worth up to P5 million only need a director’s signature. Anything up to P50 million requires an undersecretary. Beyond that, the secretary himself has to sign off.

The layered clearance system, meant to ensure accountability, instead allows corruption to seep through every rung of the ladder.

And the violations are glaring.

Five of the top 15 contractors, for example, were undercapitalized — a direct breach of a basic requirement.

Others lacked the “Single Largest Completed Contract” (SLCC) certification that’s supposed to prove they’ve handled similar big projects before.

Some even had records of unfinished or “ghost” projects. Yet the DPWH still handed them contracts.

Loopholes, not loopholes

The DPWH manual couldn’t be clearer. It says an SLCC must be backed by a certificate of final acceptance from a project owner — proof that the job was done, and done right.

But here’s the catch: the certifying authority is the DPWH itself. The same agency that knows full well which projects were completed, and which were left to rot.

Then there’s the requirement that there must be at least three bidders for every project.

On the ground, that often means two “dummy” contractors filing placeholder bids, just so the prearranged winner can pass off as legitimate.

Tax compliance? It’s supposed to be mandatory. But bidders who skip this cost gain an edge, while regulators look the other way.

Even the rules on who can bid — Filipino ownership thresholds, joint venture qualifications — get twisted.

On paper, the DPWH Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) and Technical Working Group (TWG) should be the gatekeepers. In reality, suspicions of collusion within these committees are hard to ignore.

Who bears responsibility?

With former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan already under scrutiny, the question is whether this mess was simply caused by incompetence — or was it willful negligence.

As for newly appointed Secretary Vince Dizon, this could be the defining test: does he clean house, or does he inherit the cycle?

Beyond corruption, a human cost

It’s easy to treat flood control as just another government line item, but these projects are lifelines for millions who live in low-lying, flood-prone areas.

Every peso lost to graft is a community left vulnerable. Every ghost project is a home, a livelihood, a life at greater risk the next time the waters rise.

The administration loves to talk about Bagong Pilipinas — a “new Philippines.” But until corruption is rooted out of the very agencies meant for building, every new bridge, road, and flood-control system will be fragile. Not just to typhoons and overflowing rivers, but to the same old rot of a system long overdue for repair.