FILIPINOS know floods. What we didn’t know, at least not in this kind of detail, was how much the flood control budget itself had become a river of money washing through a tight circle of contractors, political crocodiles and political brokers. In Congress and on live TV, witnesses alleged that 25 to 30 percent went into “commissions,” with lawmakers dragged into the undertow. All have denied it, of course. But even the denials can’t mop up the stench of ghost and substandard projects, cloned designs and fake geotags now floating on the surface.
This isn’t just a scandal. It’s a state/government failure with a price in lives. While families stack sandbags and bail out living rooms, corrupt politicians and groups of contractors have somehow cornered a disproportionate slice of the flood control pie since 2022. Meanwhile, the national audit trail shows years of questioned disbursements. That’s not politics; that’s arithmetic.
By any moral standard, there is no such thing as “harmless” graft in a country lashed by roughly 20 storms a year. Every peso stolen from flood works comes back as brown water in a family’s kitchen. That’s why this isn’t a mere “anomaly” in procurement. It is a betrayal in the climate era. Consider the scale: allegedly, nearly P545 billion was poured into flood mitigation over the past three years alone, now under review because too many projects are substandard, ghost or wildly overpriced.
The facts have breached the levee. The Commission on Audit (COA) issued fraud-audit reports on five Bulacan projects, some declared “100-percent complete” on paper yet missing or substandard on site. The COA and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) jointly presented these findings to the Ombudsman: a Baliwag river wall with no construction found, an overpayment flagged in Calumpit and other “completed” works that crumble at a touch. This isn’t accounting pedantry; it’s evidence.
What does that evidence tell us? Procurement has been captured, oversight blunted and disaster funds treated as a form of political liquidity. If we’re serious, remedies must bite: immediate blacklisting and prosecution for falsified as-builts; mandatory public release of designs, geotags, progress photos and unit costs; escrowed payments tied to independent third-party inspections; random COA/DPWH joint spot-checks; lifetime bans for repeat offenders; and personal liability for officials who sign off on fiction. Until those teeth sink in, the flood control budget remains what it has quietly become — a waterway for rent-seeking, and a guarantee that the next storm will drown not just homes, but public trust.
First moves
Accountability has begun to stir. Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, newly appointed after his predecessor resigned, suspended bidding for all locally funded projects, vowed a lifetime blacklist for erring contractors and filed the first graft complaints tied to the scandal against DPWH personnel and several companies before the Ombudsman. The Palace has also created an independent commission to investigate. These are the first moves, not victories. I am also very skeptical about all of this.
Meanwhile, the private sector has openly acknowledged what citizens have long suspected: flood control now accounts for roughly a third of the entire DPWH infrastructure budget, allegedly totaling over P1.2 trillion from 2023 to 2026 — and still, we wade chest-deep each monsoon. Even the President declared a “zero” line item for new DPWH flood control in 2026, citing unspent money and substandard work. That pause is a chance to rethink, not to abandon flood defense.
The rot exposed
First, kickbacks are “standard practice.” Under oath, contractors alleged 25-percent cuts for lawmakers, while a former DPWH engineer claimed 30-percent kickbacks for certain senators; however, the allegations were denied. Whether one believes the accusers, the system plainly invites rent-seeking: line item insertions balloon, projects multiply and technical oversight.
Second, budget distortions and insertion. A fresh example: an alleged P355-million “insertion” linked to Bulacan flood works surfaced during budget scrutiny, exactly the fertile ground where pork-barrel schemes thrive, despite a decade-old Supreme Court ruling striking down PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) and its cousins. We learned the wrong lesson from Belgica v. Ochoa: Strike the label, keep the practice.
Third, compliance theater. Project “completions” certified from desks, not riverbanks; identical designs copied and pasted across provinces; “as-built” photos that never saw rain. This is why COA’s fraud audits are a must and should have bite precisely because there’s value in physical truth over paper truth.
What would real accountability look like?
Three things, simple but powerful. First, radical transparency. We finally have a new law — Republic Act [RA] 12009, or the New Government Procurement Act — that forces the government to name the real owners behind winning contractors and to publish project data online. Use it. Post the actual blueprints, bills of materials, change orders, photos of progress and payment records. Let the public, engineers and even ordinary netizens check if the numbers and the work add up.
Second, cut off the pork at its source. Flood money should follow river-basin master plans, not whoever shouts loudest in Congress. Stop endless project slicing (“unli-phasing”), cap change orders and force rebidding once costs balloon, and end the abuse of “emergency” shortcuts that are often just excuses for skipping bidding rules.
Third, punishments with bite. No more recycling shady contractors under new company names. Blacklist them for good. When audits flag corruption, link it to lifestyle checks and anti-money laundering probes. And don’t just file Ombudsman cases for show, push them through to actual convictions.
Right now, international corruption rankings put the Philippines near the bottom. The Philippines scores 33/100 on the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (rank 114/180), and Transparency International now explicitly links corruption to failed climate adaptation. That’s not an abstract number; it explains why floods keep winning. What we need isn’t another sermon; it’s plumbing: rules that make stealing hard, transparency that makes lying risky and penalties that make corruption too expensive to try. Until then, every storm will keep proving the same point: the water isn’t the only thing rising. If we do not treat graft and corruption as a climate hazard, we will keep building monuments to waste.
Most importantly, Congress is not a bystander. The scandal is not only about engineers and contractors. Budget architecture helped create it. When a single subsector of flood control projects absorbs about one-third of DPWH’s infrastructure outlays, discretion and temptation concentrate. This is a legislative accountability as much as an executive one.
Conclusion
This is the moment to break the cycle. This so-called independent commission, created by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., must work quickly and fearlessly. However, durable fixes are already on the table: radical transparency under RA 12009, ruthless blacklisting and prosecution, a rebalanced budget, among others. We should measure success not by the number of hearings or pressers, but by a quieter metric: fewer flooded homes after the next storm. Anything less and the water will rise again, right on schedule.
No doubt, massive corruption sits today in the Philippines, and the flood control mess has become the poster child. Flood control budgets are supposed to save lives. In practice, they’ve become the fastest moving current in our patronage economy. Truth be told, the Philippines’ river of corruption keeps rising, and it’s rotting the country and drowning us all.
Source: The Manila Times
https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/09/13/opinion/columns/billions-washed-away-the-great-flood-control-heist/2183659
