Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson said over the weekend that the Department of Public Works and Highways needs a fresh generation of professional civil servants to eliminate entrenched corruption.
“Assuming all DPWH officials submitted their courtesy resignations, Sec. Vince may start hiring licensed civil engineers from the private sector,” he said on Saturday.
According to Lacson, new hires from outside the government could bring with them integrity and accountability instead of perpetuating existing patterns of graft.
Dizon, who assumed leadership of the DPWH earlier this month, ordered all officials to submit courtesy resignations as part of an initial cleanup effort.
The Department has long been criticized for massive corruption, with substandard and even non-existent flood control projects, drawing public scrutiny.
Lacson said the agency has received more than 1.9 trillion pesos for flood control projects since 2011, yet communities continue to suffer from widespread flooding.
He referred to the misuse of public funds by DPWH engineers, accusing some of gambling away hundreds of millions of pesos in casinos.
During a recent plenary session in the Senate, the veteran lawmaker revealed that both senior and junior officials have developed schemes to profit at the expense of taxpayers.
He pointed to junior personnel in district engineering offices who have begun imposing additional requirements on contractors.
These requirements, he said, are priced at thousands of pesos per page, on top of the usual commissions and obligations already being collected.
“Boundless greed. Rotten at the top, rotten at the bottom. Learning fast from their superiors” is how Lacson described the DPWH as an organization.
