What residents of Barangay Cabaroan, Piddig, Ilocos Norte are staring at today is not a bridge, but concrete piles rising from a river, even as government records show a P28.46-million project phase booked as “completed.”

The project, listed under DPWH program code 25AA0294 under the Convergence and Special Support Program, has been flagged online as a “ghost project.” Official documents reviewed by the DAILY TRIBUNE show it is not fictitious, but they also explain why public suspicion has persisted.

The contractor is North Tech Builders and Construction Supply, which received about P25.6 million, or 90 percent of the contract amount, between March and September. Roughly P2.8 million remains unpaid. The declared output covers ten sets of bored pile foundations, forming the bridge substructure. There is no deck, no span, and no usable crossing.

A confidential DPWH status report nonetheless marks the foundation phase as “100 percent completed,” with no issues noted, even though the project remains non-functional until future phases are funded and built.

This is where the controversy deepens, because North Tech is not just any contractor.

An earlier investigation by Rappler identified North Tech as the third biggest DPWH contractor in Piddig since 2016, with P372.3 million in projects located in the town. Rappler reported that the company is owned by Maribeth Salazar, wife of Piddig Vice Mayor Edwin Salazar and sister-in-law of Eddie Guillen, a presidential appointee of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and current head of the National Irrigation Administration.

Guillen’s office has denied any intervention in procurement, citing decentralized bidding systems. However, governance experts quoted by Rappler have argued that conflict does not always announce itself through signatures, particularly when contractors tied to political families repeatedly secure projects in their own jurisdictions.

DPWH-linked sources told the DAILY TRIBUNE that the Cabaroan–Libnaoan Bridge is part of a multi-year plan, meaning additional funding is required before a bridge actually exists. This technical explanation, however, collides with public reality. Funds are released early, while communities wait years for usable infrastructure.

The optics are worsened by broader spending patterns in northern Luzon. Alleged FY 2025 budget data circulated publicly by Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste show the district of Ferdinand Alexander Marcos receiving P12.91 billion, the largest allocation in the region, reinforcing perceptions that areas linked to the Marcos political base remain priority recipients of state-funded projects.

Officially, the Cabaroan project is not a ghost. But neither is it a bridge. What stands instead is a familiar Philippine paradox: projects declared finished, funds largely released, and communities left waiting, this time under the shadow of a contractor embedded in the same political network that dominates Ilocos Norte.