Palace to LGUs: Do a Vico, report irregularity in public works
Malacañang on Tuesday urged all officials of local government units (LGUs) across the country to follow the lead of Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto by reporting to President Marcos himself the graft-ridden flood control projects in their localities.
In a briefing, Palace press officer Claire Castro said the Marcos administration lauded Sotto’s prompt response to the President’s appeal to the public to help identify corruption-riddled government projects.
In a press conference on Monday, Mr. Marcos revealed that P100 billion, or 18 percent of the entire P545-billion budget for flood mitigation projects undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) from July 2022 to May 2025, was awarded to only 15 out of 2,409 accredited contractors.
He called this initial finding “disturbing,” though he did not make any accusations about possible anomalies by the private contractors mentioned in his presentation.
Shortly after the President’s briefing, Sotto pointed out in a Facebook post that two of the 15 contractors identified by the President—Alpha & Omega Gen. Contractor & Development Corp. and St. Timothy Construction Corp.—were owned by the Discayas, the family of Cezarah Rowena “Sarah” Discaya, who ran against him in the May 2025 elections.
The mayor also listed seven more contractor firms owned by the Discayas: St. Gerrard Construction; Elite General Contractor and Development Corp.; St. Matthew General Contractor & Development; Great Pacific Builders and General Contractor; YPR General Contractor and Construction Supply; Amethyst Horizon Builders and General Contractor & Dev’t Corp.; and Way Maker OPC.
In August 2015, the DPWH suspended St. Gerrard from participating in any public bidding for a year, after it submitted a “spurious” tax clearance certificate.
St. Gerrard was again blacklisted by the DPWH in January 2020 over delays in the construction of school buildings in Indang, Cavite.
Sotto had committed that the Pasig government would send to the President all information it possessed on government projects suspected to be tainted with corruption.
‘Nonfunctional, non-existent’
Meanwhile, Iloilo City Mayor Raisa Treñas also flagged four of the DPWH flood control projects, amounting to a total of P575 million, contracted to the Discaya-owned firms, particularly St. Timothy and Alpha & Omega.
“These projects are not only nonfunctional, some have even worsened flooding, while others appear to be practically non-existent,” she said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
According to Treñas, the projects did not go through proper consultation and were constructed without permits from the city government. They were also never reviewed by experts and “allegedly done in haste, sometimes in the middle of the night.”
