Dingdong Dantes exposes the human cost of corruption

The journey begins in Bulacan, ground zero of the country’s multi-billion peso flood control scandal. Despite massive funding, Dingdong witnesses communities still submerged in water—a painful testament to incomplete, defective, and in some cases, nonexistent projects.

He meets a grandmother whose house has been flooded regularly for half a decade, unable to relocate because she simply cannot afford to start over. A father wades with his young daughter through knee-deep water just to get her to school, a routine that has long replaced the safety and predictability children deserve.

Here, playgrounds sit underwater. Classrooms are unusable. Lives revolve around tides and storms. These aren’t mere inconveniences—they are the real, lasting scars of promises broken by greed and mismanagement.

Along the rivers of Bulacan, Dingdong uncovers more signs of wrongdoing: drainage systems that exist only in documents, river clean-up projects that never materialized, and structures left unfinished despite being marked “completed.”

The investigation expands from Bulacan to Pampanga, Northern Samar, Zambales, Nueva Ecija, and Maguindanao—each location revealing different faces of the same problem.

In Pampanga, Dingdong travels through a battered road in Apalit, where residents navigate craters and puddles every day. What should have been a simple transport route has become a hazard.

In Northern Samar, he meets students studying in makeshift classrooms beside an abandoned, uncompleted school building—one that could have transformed their future had it been finished.

Zambales presents yet another heartbreaking picture: children crossing a broken bridge to reach school, putting their safety at risk because the promised repairs were never delivered.

In Nueva Ecija, farmers drag their produce through thick mud, letting carabaos swim across rivers or relying on improvised rafts to transport livelihood that already yields very little profit.

Perhaps most striking is Maguindanao, where Dingdong joins health workers trekking through mud and slippery trails to bring medicine and vaccines to isolated communities—places cut off from help simply because roads remain undone.

These stories reveal a national tragedy that extends far beyond defective infrastructure. It is a crisis of trust, dignity, and the right of every Filipino to safety and opportunity.

For Dingdong Dantes, the experience was transformative. Being on the ground, seeing these struggles firsthand, gave faces and names to systemic issues often buried in reports.

He emphasizes that corruption does more than misuse money—it robs the nation of progress.

“Broken Roads, Broken Promises” is a timely and necessary reminder that infrastructure is not just concrete and steel—it is the very backbone of education, healthcare, livelihood, and safety.

In sharing these stories, Dingdong Dantes amplifies voices long ignored and calls attention to the urgent need for integrity in governance.

Catch “Broken Roads, Broken Promises: Isang Paglalakbay Kasama si Dingdong Dantes” this Saturday, 15 November, at 9:30 p.m. on GMA—an eye-opening journey into the realities too many Filipinos live through every day, and a powerful plea for a future where promises are finally kept.