Ping raises more red flags on Taguig’s ‘ghost’ projects
Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Sunday asked Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon to explain how coordinates of a supposed project in Taguig City were located in the Visayas, based on geotagged photos.
He also claimed that the project’s contractor was linked to spouses Pacifico “Curlee” and Cezarah “Sarah” Discaya, central figures in the multibillion-peso flood control projects that turned into a still unresolved political scandal beginning last year.
“Sec. Vince Dizon, please explain how this finding of your own team should not be flagged as a ghost project in Taguig. (Since when has Taguig been located in Leyte?)” Lacson said in a post on X on Sunday.
“To further highlight the red flag, Discaya’s St Timothy is the contractor. What do you say about this, Sec?” he added in a separate post.
Lacson cited a report on a Taguig project with Contract ID 220B0106, whose geotagged photographs attached to its billing reports contained coordinates “located approximately 600 kilometers away in Leyte province.”
Billing documents
He also cited the project’s financial billing documents, which show that a 15 percent advance payment of P13,738,755.81 was released on June 23, 2022, with all the attached billing photographs bearing coordinates in Tacloban City, Leyte.
The first partial billing, amounting to P37.162 million, was dated July 27, 2022, but had no image attached. The second partial billing, amounting to P19.174 million and dated Sept. 12, 2022, had attached images with no coordinates.
The third partial billing, amounting to P21.202 million and dated Sept. 22, 2022, likewise had no coordinates in its attached images. The fourth and final billing, amounting to P18.960 million and dated Feb. 22, 2023, also had attached images without coordinates.
Lacson noted that the DPWH inspection report likewise found that the coordinates indicated in the geotagged photographs attached to the Progress Billing and Final Billing “do not correspond with the actual project site verified during the inspection.”
Site inspection reports
The senator’s latest statement came after Dizon said during the Senate finance subcommittee’s hearing on the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) on Friday that there are no ghost projects in Taguig City.
Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, whose political bailiwick is Taguig, asked Dizon about the status of his agency’s investigation into the city’s infrastructure projects.
“Are there any ghost projects in Taguig?” Cayetano asked.
“None. In our investigation, none,” Dizon replied.
Dizon noted that the investigations into flood control projects nationwide are ongoing, and the 107 projects in Taguig all have accomplishments.
But Lacson on Saturday said Dizon’s claim that there are no ghost projects in Taguig City appeared to contradict findings in the DPWH’s own site inspection reports.
Lacson expressed sympathy for the DPWH site inspection engineers after their own boss contradicted their findings.
“Poor Vince Dizon. The ‘pressure’ of work may have clouded his memory. The DPWH already turned over to my Senate office records of nonexistent but reported as completed slope protection projects in Taguig,” Lacson said.
“Poor DPWH Site Inspection Engineers. Their boss, Sec Vince Dizon directly contradicted their own site inspection reports in Taguig, specifically submitted by personnel from the department’s Bureau of Quality and Safety and Bureau of Maintenance,” he added.
Lacson also cited DPWH data stemming from its “Analysis of Potential Similar Billing Photographs from 2017-2025 of Taguig projects using AI-Based Image Similarity Detection Approach.” Of 15,523 images processed by the AI system, 1,079 pairs of images were flagged for high visual similarity.
Lacson and his team had submitted to the Office of the Ombudsman earlier at least 45 case studies detailing “systemic anomalies” in flood control infrastructure projects in Taguig.
