LEGAZPI CITY—More than five years since becoming the whistleblower in a P150-million plunder case against 42 officials and employees of the Department of Public Works and Highways in Bicol Region, Robert Canezal is now regretting his decision.
Now 52, Canezal has survived threats, harassment, three suspension orders, and imprisonment involving the DPWH equipment and parts scandal, he told the Standard on Thursday.
But the case has not prospered, and the former Masbate Area Equipment Service operator’s request to be admitted into the Witness Protection Program has not been entertained. Canezal said this has made him the laughingstock of his former colleagues in the department.
“I resisted offered rewards, threats, and faced harassments for accepting the job as a whistleblower that I have started in a hope the [previous] Aquino administration was just honest in its campaign against corruption,” he told the Standard.
Canezal appealed to Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales for a speedy resolution of his case, saying: “After all, I am no longer interested on the outcome of the case, with many more executives and employees involved also contemplating to retire.”
He filed his plunder complaint against top officials and employees of the DPWH regional office, Regional Equipment Service, and Masbate Area Equipment Service with the Office of the Ombudsman on Feb. 11, 2012.
This was amended by a final complaint filed on June 18, 2012, two months after the DPWH regional office bid out the alleged cannibalized and chopped equipment on March 20, 2012.
In less than two weeks, the equipment declared as junk was rushed out of Masbate by the winning bidder, junk trader Jimmy Carreon from Pampanga.
Canezal said the equipment was the physical evidence in the 18-page investigation report sanctioned by the DPWH regional office in 2010, “which covers a decade of scandal, with me as the source of documentary evidences,” he said.
He admitted in the complaint that he was a party to the scandal, being the lone equipment operator in Masbate. “I even served as collector of the undocumented leased equipment rental from private contractors,” he added.
Blowing the whistle, however, cost him three suspensions, with the first order served in 2011, while two other suspension orders “were intentionally hid and not released from the Office of (then-DPWH) Secretary Rogelio Singson, in an effort to soften my strong stand in the case,” he said.
“A DPWH lawyer even visited me in Masbate in 2014 to court my withdrawal of the case as far as the regional director, who had already been reassigned to another region in 2013, was concerned,” Canezal said.
He said the lawyer who visited him “signed in the DPWH Masbate District Engineering logbook that he’s from Singson office on official business to see me.”
The two suspension orders, for 60 days each, surfaced only under the Duterte administration and were served in November 2016 and last February, said Canezal. The first suspension order was signed by Danilo Dequito, the DPWH Bicol regional director at the time, and served in 2012.
Canezal recalled that when he surfaced in 2010 to disclose the Masbate equipment scandal following the investigation sanctioned by Dequito, “I was hoping the Commission on Audit and DPWH where I used to expose the scandal, would be of support.”
He was summoned to the regional office in Legazpi for a meeting in early 2011, where Dequito “simply appealed to me to refrain from giving interviews to the media regarding the uncovered scandals in Masbate Equipment Service office.”
“However, when I simply stood pat on my complaints, a DPWH lawyer who was present during the meeting suddenly stood up, pointing his finger at me, shouting: ‘You are suspended!’ True to his threat, a few months later, I received the suspension order signed by the regional director,” Canezal said.
He asserted that he never knew the regional office “was already cooking something” when in 2012, the cannibalized equipment – which became the source of kickbacks with spare parts sold for money, Canezal said – was already readied for bidding as scraps.
In his complaint, Canezal mentioned the Masbate Area Equipment Service Engineer’s disposal of four inoperational equipment (a backhoe, a grader, and two dump trucks) to a Masbate district executive, who had them repaired and repainted from the DPWH official color orange to yellow.
The whistleblower said the Masbate official used the equipment for his construction business in the province.
Canezal said the junk equipment in Masbate was estimated at 140 tons. However, this was declared at only 47.5 tons in a bidding at the regional office on March 20, 2012 to a junk trader from Region 3, who used to corner junk from area equipment services in the region.
What was insulting, Canezal said, was that to avoid suspicion, the regional office included in the rigged bidding a small quantity of junk from the area equipment service offices in Catanduanes, Camarines Norte and Sorsogon, all at a total cost of just over P800,00, documents showed.
The complaint also showed a procurement of three drilling machines at P5 million each, but these were not actually delivered, Canezal said.
He asserted the Masbate DPWH office merely repaired the junk-declared machines using available spare parts, and put them on record as the subject of the procurements paid by the regional office “in connivance with the Masbate Area Equipment and Regional Equipment officials, COA, and DPWH regional office.”