TURNING POINT: Angry and Hungry

Both the Senate President, Chiz Escudero, and the Speaker of the House, Martin Romualdez, were swept
away from their respective position by the rampaging flood of corruption that has submerged the
country.
President Marcos last month said that about P545 billion had been channeled to flood control projects
since 2022, noting that 15 contractors bagged about P100 billion or 20% of the total funds.
The House and Senate have launched separate inquiries that have since implicated engineers,
contractors, and politicians in large-scale corruption.
The Discayas, who own 2 of the 15 contractors named by PBBM, have bagged a P207.25B revenue in a
10-year scheme of connivance with lawmakers and key officials of the Department of Public Works and
Highways.
Several flood mitigation projects are substandard or have not met the specifications, or unfinished,
cannot be located, or are invisible, thus, considered ghosts.
And bribery is blatant. A huge sum of money in cash passed from one hand to another without any
project being implemented at all.
For instance, the first district engineer of Bulacan loaned the contracting license of SYMS Construction
Trading to implement the flood control projects himself. On paper, the project appears implemented
and completed by SYMS, but in reality was never done or even started at all.
On one occasion, Sally Santos of SYMS delivered boxes of cash worth P245, 000,000 to the First District
Office of the DPWH as payment to the engineer and his cohorts for supposedly implementing the
project. The SYMS Construction Trading on Monday, September 8, admitted delivering cold cash totaling
P1 billion to the Department of Public Works and Highways from 2022 to 2025.
SYMS, accordingly, has to dance with the music to avoid being whimsically backlisted.
SYMS Construction Trading has secured 16 flood control projects worth about P1 billion in Bulacan
alone, including a P55 million project in Baliuag (represented by Congresswoman Augustina Dominique
Pancho in the 2nd district) that was supposed to start in February but was found to be non-existent. On
Aug 19, 2025, DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan confirmed “ghost” flood control
projects in Bulacan, involving contractors Wawao Builders
and SYMS Construction.
Mr. Marcos created the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) to investigate the anomaly of
the flood control projects and other anomalies in public works, with the assurance that neither friends
nor kin will be spared from prosecution. The House Speaker, Martin Romualdez, his cousin, the high
priest of the insertion scandal, soon resigned uncannily, betraying his possible link to the flood control
scandal. His resignation does not erase, in any way, his accountability, if any.
The hunt for the corrupt officials in government has already started. The Department of Public Works
and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Vince Dizon has sacked three engineers from the agency’s Bulacan First

District Engineering Office (DEO) after uncovering irregularities in multimillion-peso flood control
projects that were declared completed despite being left unfinished.
Dizon confirmed on Thursday the removal of suspended District Engineer Henry C. Alcantara, Assistant
District Engineer Brice Ericson Hernandez, and former Construction Section head Jaypee Mendoza.
The three officials were linked to what he described as “ghost and substandard projects” in Bulacan, one
of which Dizon inspected himself last week— the P96.5-million flood control project along the Angat
River in Barangay Sipat.
The corruption atmosphere has thickened when the assistant district engineer of the First District of
Bulacan, Brice Hernandez, claimed that Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva received kickback
amounting to 30% of their insertion download, which is P355M for Estrada in 2022, and P600M for
Villanueva in 2023. Naturally, the two senators denied the allegation and threatened to sue Hernandez.
More than a week has passed the threat has not materialized. A public trial may yet open a can of
worms.
The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee has conducted a hearing on the flood control scandal. Senator Ping
Lacson, the Chair of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, says he will not hesitate to recommend criminal
charges against Senators Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada if evidence presented by sacked Bulacan
district engineer Brice Hernandez proves that the two benefited from alleged budget insertions in flood
control projects. He temporarily freed Hernandez from Senate detention and had him escorted to his
house to secure the pieces of evidence against the two senators.
Lacson confirmed that Hernandez returned to the Senate in Pasay City at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20,
carrying boxes of documents and a computer, which the engineer believes could prove his allegations
against Villanueva and Estrada, as well as several other lawmakers and government officials.
Once the evidence is unsealed and found solid, he will recommend filing criminal charges against the
two senators and forward to the ICI all the documentary evidence in the possession of the Senate Blue
Ribbon Committee to make the ICI investigation easier.
The President is angry a corruption. The whole nation is not only angry but hunger for justice. This anger
may only subside a bit if high-profile personalities are charged with plunder and rot in jail.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental.)