The flood control saga has revealed how greed took on a life of its own in government, even deceiving President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. into believing the projects would protect the country from the ravages of the increasingly unpredictable weather.
President Marcos, in his July 2025 State of the Nation Address, highlighted over 5,500 completed flood control projects.
“We have completed more than 5,500 flood control projects nationwide, protecting communities and livelihoods from the devastating impact of flooding. These include river dikes, drainage systems, and floodgates, with an allocation of P350 billion in this year’s budget alone to ensure resilience against climate challenges,” he bragged.
His claim of completed projects was based on Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) reports, which later proved to be fictitious, incomplete, or poorly constructed. A project in Bulacan, certified as 90-percent complete, was found to have cost the government P2.5 million per meter for a substandard dike.
His being misled sparked the President’s ordering an audit of the DPWH from the beginning of his term in 2022.
A total of 2,409 contractors for both local and national flood control projects were identified. Of these, 15 contractors cornered 20 percent of the entire P545-billion budget for flood control, five of them holding contracts covering the whole country.
Unraveled was a mafia spanning Congress, the DPWH, and auditors running the yearly heist of the national budget.
The con job began with the Executive branch’s National Expenditure Program (NEP), the national budget proposed by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), which thereafter passed through the hands of a network of individuals who each took their share of the corruption pie.
It was evident from the investigations and reports the part each of the tentacles of the network played in the greed racket, including senators and representatives whose role was to insert the flood control items in the national budget.
Then, the other actors took on their roles: DPWH officials and functionaries facilitated the rigging of bids and approvals, while Commission on Audit (CoA) personnel certified the fraudulent deals.
The contractors then paid 10 to 40 percent of the project cost in kickbacks, referred to as Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) — 15-percent to the DPWH hierarchy, four percent to the bids committee, two percent to the auditors, and the biggest slice, 20-25 percent, to the politicians.
Only 30 to 40 percent of the project budget went for the actual work.
Among the biggest letdowns was the supposed guardians of public finances, the state auditors, were part of the racket. Resident auditors in DPWH districts received “cuts” to process payments for ghost and substandard projects.
Links to campaign financing, like Senator Francis Escudero’s donor Lawrence R. Lubiano, the president of Centerways Construction and Development Inc., exposed cronyism. Lubiano was Escudero’s top campaign donor in the 2022 senatorial elections, when Escudero was victorious in his bid for a Senate seat.
Most of Centerways’ flood control contracts were secured starting in 2022, coinciding with Escudero’s political comeback, though Escudero claims the bulk were awarded before he rejoined the Senate.
Not since the P10-billion pork barrel scam pulled off by Janet Napoles has the nation been gripped by the abuses of officials who betrayed and misled the public that placed them in power.
Infuriating is the reality that the stolen funds exponentially increased, undertaken by nearly the same actors, indicating the absence of remorse and the intent to hide behind their stature in government to rob Filipinos blind.