AFP wades into flood mess—as inspectors
From the hinterlands to the flooded plains.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines has stepped into the flood control controversy after Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon sought the AFP’s assistance in inspecting around 16,000 suspected ghost projects.
“Our task is to visit the coordinates where there is said to be flood control projects and we will see if it’s existing or nonexisting,” AFP chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. said in a radio interview with dzRH on Friday.
He said the AFP had already inspected more than 8,000 project sites where it found 60 ghost projects.
Dizon, however, said earlier there were 421 nonexistent projects in those sites.
According to Brawner, that number could increase as the AFP continues its inspection.
‘Failures’
The controversy over flood control projects erupted after President Marcos, in his State of the Nation Address on July 28, criticized the “many flood control projects [that] were failures” and ordered the Department of Public Works and Highways to submit to him a list of those projects from every region.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson had also said about P1 trillion worth of these projects may have been lost to graft.
Mr. Marcos subsequently ordered an investigation into some 10,000 projects completed in the past three years.
He also said about P100 billion—or about 20 percent of the entire P545-billion budget for flood mitigation projects undertaken between July 2022, his first month in office, and May this year—was awarded to only 15 contractors.
The President has formed an independent commission to look into the corruption scandal, which in turn has prompted protests in Metro Manila and other parts of the country.
