Mayor Joy Belmonte aired her frustrations Monday upon discovering more anomalous flood control projects in Quezon City from 2022 to 2025.
At a news conference, Belmonte said they found out there were 331 flood control projects worth over P17-billion—way more than the 254 projects they initially reported.
Of the total budget in question, she said at least P14-billion were spent for flood control projects that did not align with the Quezon City drainage master plan. The city government’s investigation showed 157 projects were funded and listed under the National Expenditure Program (NEP).
“We have discovered that there were projects which were not in accordance with the project location, while there were those that really did not have project coordinates,” she said, adding there were projects that had similar costs “as if they were just copy-paste only.”
“There is this same amount — P14,499,000 — for each project but from different places and with different project designs,” Belmonte noted. “Worse, there were 91 out of 117 projects categorized under drainage projects but were constructed in areas in the city that are not flood-prone.”
The rehabilitation of the San Juan River involved more than 90 phases for just one project, according to the Quezon City government.
Of the 15 top contractors mentioned by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Belmonte said seven of these, including the Discaya-owned firms with eight projects, had contracts with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in the city.
“I’m outraged that this amount (billions of pesos) has been squandered. The amount could have addressed the classroom backlog of 5,000, 350 PhilHealth-accredited centers and 14,177 housing units for the informal settlers,” she said.
The city government will submit its own findings to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI). “As a normal person, I believe there are ghost projects,” Belmonte said of the initial results of their own internal probe.
When asked if she supports the indignation rally set on September 21 against corruption in flood control projects, Belmonte answered in the affirmative but hoped it would not end up like the social unrest in Nepal.
The Quezon City government has signed a memorandum of agreement with Dr. Alfredo Mahar Francisco Lagmay, executive director of the University of the Philippines-Resilience Institute and NOAH Center, and engineer Paul Lazarte, president of the Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers-QC Chapter, to rehabilitate and restore failed flood control projects.
