“The ICI will have its hands full digging into a cesspool”
Yet uncovered in the spate of investigations on the corruption in the DPWH by orders of the crooks among our legislators is the role of some other departments and agencies of government in the well-organized syndicates that have altogether collaborated in the grand scheme to milk the public till for personal greed.
Can anyone believe that the Commission on Audit, Constitutionally mandated to be the chief inspector of how taxpayer money is spent by government instrumentalities, is innocent in the flood control scams?
The COA posts resident auditors in the entire DPWH machinery, yet their personnel and officials kept quiet while projects were paid despite being shoddy or ghosts.
Now it has been uncovered that one of its commissioners, Mario Lipana’s wife Marilou, CEO of a certain Olympus Mining and Builders Corporation, received 200 million pesos worth of flood control projects from the DPWH.
And why not? If resident auditors and their staff can receive drippings from the DEs to close their eyes, how about one of their bosses? “Patty” or “pati ako,” and this time the collaborator is none other than an “olympian” in the COA.
Still, the chairman of the COA, who has been a government official across three previous presidencies, has not even upbraided his fellow commissioner.
And what about the Department of Budget and Management? They are the holders of the key to the safe.
How is it that they willy-nilly accept the submissions of the DPWH and incorporate these into the National Expenditure Program? With its presence in every region of the country, surely they must have seen repetitive flood control funding requests?
Surely they are aware of what top DPWH officials call a “leadership fund,” a scheme intended to circumvent the Supreme Court ban on legislator’s pork? As I have kept stating in this space, the “pork” is already incorporated in the NEP, to be augmented later as Congress deliberates on the budget.
And being the guardians of the combination to the government’s safe, how in heaven’s name can they justify releasing funds from “unprogrammed allocations” even when there is no money in the treasury?
It’s like one fashion brand in “collab” with another. Parang “Swatch” or “Nike.”
Now there is even talk of “sweetheart deals” engineered by a DepEd undersecretary who wielded much power when his boss was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and supposedly asked a DPWH undersecretary for flood control projects too, “bahala na siya” sa release of funds which was miraculously produced in an instant by the DBM.
And speaking of the DepEd, remember how in the previous administration, some undersecretaries transferred funds to the notorious Procurement Service of the DBM to purchase outmoded and overpriced laptops, supplied by a Sunwest Corporation which apart from being a construction firm, also styled itself as a “trading firm”?
All these to the consternation of a respected secretary who trusted her underlings to be as upright as she was.
And the partners in crime? PS-DBM and the Sunwest of Zaldy Co.
How about school buildings? Aha, that is another sordid “collab” story.
Not to forget the Department of Health, who entrusts their budgeted funds for hospital buildings to the DPWH. Now we discover shabbily built health centers, perhaps ghosts as well?
DOH explains that they have empty hospitals and health centers because there are not enough medical practitioners to populate these. Why build them then? How about employing “ghosts”, Secretary Herbosa?
If flood control is the project of choice of our legislators in the past four Congresses, how about their previous pet project — farm-to-market roads which the Department of Agriculture spends supposedly to help our poor farmers bring their produce to the market?
Long has it been revealed that well-built FMR’s lead to legislators’ resorts and farms, while merely graded mud and a few rocks constitute legislators’ farm-to-pocket roads. Again, in collaboration with DA and DPWH.
Even our gentle Bangko Sentral governor, who likewise chairs the Anti- Money Laundering Council (AMLC) raised eyebrows when Senate investigations discovered that piles and piles of cash, to the tune of 475 million pesos in one blow, were withdrawn from the account of a sleazy contractor in the Landbank whose license is borrowed by “ghosts” for delivery to their partners in crime who follow orders from the district congressman and dictates from the most powerful satrap of the legislature, mismo?
When cornered, the Malolos Landbank branch manager, a government employee as well, lamely told our senators that they “report” such withdrawals taken from a DPWH payment to the AMLC, “for compliance.”
End of responsibility. No questions asked from the contractor, who they are supposed to “know your client well.”
The ICI will have its hands full digging into a cesspool
Yet uncovered in the spate of investigations on the corruption in the DPWH by orders of the crooks among our legislators is the role of some other departments and agencies of government in the well-organized syndicates that have altogether collaborated in the grand scheme to milk the public till for personal greed.
Can anyone believe that the Commission on Audit, Constitutionally mandated to be the chief inspector of how taxpayer money is spent by government instrumentalities, is innocent in the flood control scams?
The COA posts resident auditors in the entire DPWH machinery, yet their personnel and officials kept quiet while projects were paid despite being shoddy or ghosts.
Now it has been uncovered that one of its commissioners, Mario Lipana’s wife Marilou, CEO of a certain Olympus Mining and Builders Corporation, received 200 million pesos worth of flood control projects from the DPWH.
And why not? If resident auditors and their staff can receive drippings from the DEs to close their eyes, how about one of their bosses? “Patty” or “pati ako,” and this time the collaborator is none other than an “olympian” in the COA.
Still, the chairman of the COA, who has been a government official across three previous presidencies, has not even upbraided his fellow commissioner.
And what about the Department of Budget and Management? They are the holders of the key to the safe.
How is it that they willy-nilly accept the submissions of the DPWH and incorporate these into the National Expenditure Program? With its presence in every region of the country, surely they must have seen repetitive flood control funding requests?
Surely they are aware of what top DPWH officials call a “leadership fund,” a scheme intended to circumvent the Supreme Court ban on legislator’s pork? As I have kept stating in this space, the “pork” is already incorporated in the NEP, to be augmented later as Congress deliberates on the budget.
And being the guardians of the combination to the government’s safe, how in heaven’s name can they justify releasing funds from “unprogrammed allocations” even when there is no money in the treasury?
It’s like one fashion brand in “collab” with another. Parang “Swatch” or “Nike.”
Now there is even talk of “sweetheart deals” engineered by a DepEd undersecretary who wielded much power when his boss was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and supposedly asked a DPWH undersecretary for flood control projects too, “bahala na siya” sa release of funds which was miraculously produced in an instant by the DBM.
And speaking of the DepEd, remember how in the previous administration, some undersecretaries transferred funds to the notorious Procurement Service of the DBM to purchase outmoded and overpriced laptops, supplied by a Sunwest Corporation which apart from being a construction firm, also styled itself as a “trading firm”?
All these to the consternation of a respected secretary who trusted her underlings to be as upright as she was.
And the partners in crime? PS-DBM and the Sunwest of Zaldy Co.
How about school buildings? Aha, that is another sordid “collab” story.
Not to forget the Department of Health, who entrusts their budgeted funds for hospital buildings to the DPWH. Now we discover shabbily built health centers, perhaps ghosts as well?
DOH explains that they have empty hospitals and health centers because there are not enough medical practitioners to populate these. Why build them then? How about employing “ghosts”, Secretary Herbosa?
If flood control is the project of choice of our legislators in the past four Congresses, how about their previous pet project — farm-to-market roads which the Department of Agriculture spends supposedly to help our poor farmers bring their produce to the market?
Long has it been revealed that well-built FMR’s lead to legislators’ resorts and farms, while merely graded mud and a few rocks constitute legislators’ farm-to-pocket roads. Again, in collaboration with DA and DPWH.
Even our gentle Bangko Sentral governor, who likewise chairs the Anti- Money Laundering Council (AMLC) raised eyebrows when Senate investigations discovered that piles and piles of cash, to the tune of 475 million pesos in one blow, were withdrawn from the account of a sleazy contractor in the Landbank whose license is borrowed by “ghosts” for delivery to their partners in crime who follow orders from the district congressman and dictates from the most powerful satrap of the legislature, mismo?
When cornered, the Malolos Landbank branch manager, a government employee as well, lamely told our senators that they “report” such withdrawals taken from a DPWH payment to the AMLC, “for compliance.”
End of responsibility. No questions asked from the contractor, who they are supposed to “know your client well.”
The ICI will have its hands full digging into a cesspool
