Bicol DPWH plunder began in Cory Aquino’s presidency

By MANUEL T. UGALDE

The plunder of public works funds in the Bicol region began as early as the presidency of Corazon Aquino.

This was the opinion of a high-ranking public works official who reacted strongly to the recent Bicol Mail reports on the infrastructure scandal that has already led to the imprisonment of a Bicolano bureau director and the suicide of a district administrative officer, following the creation of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) in July this year.

The source, who requested anonymity because he remains active in the construction industry after retiring from government service, said the recent arrest of newly promoted Bureau of Maintenance director Ryan Altea and the suicide of Engineer Larry Reyes of the Sorsogon First District Engineering Office on November 13 were “deeply disturbing developments” for many engineers in the region.

Altea, an Albay native and nephew of the late Undersecretary for Finance Joel Altea, was among the initial 17 personalities ordered arrested by the Sandiganbayan for alleged large-scale plunder in Oriental Mindoro, where ghost flood-control projects were implemented while he was assistant regional director of Region IV-B. He had also served as assistant district engineer of Albay’s 2nd District.

According to the source, the ICI’s investigation into ghost flood-control projects and widespread substandard infrastructure nationwide has laid bare the “monstrous” collusion among lawmakers, public works engineers, and contractors—an inquiry he said “should have been done long ago.”

An earlier ICI report showed that out of 10,000 infrastructure projects validated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, 412 were confirmed as ghost flood-control projects across the country. Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon vowed that “no one in the DPWH will be spared,” including contractors and lawmakers implicated in the large-scale scandal.

The retired official said ICI is now closely zeroing in on Bicol, a region he described as historically rife with corruption due to long-standing collaboration between lawmakers and public works officials “as early as the Cory Aquino administration.”

He added that many engineers even fantasized being assigned to Bicol because it was considered “a great source of easy money.” Numerous well-known engineers from other regions who worked in Bicol, he claimed, are now “filthy rich.” One former Albay district engineer, now assigned elsewhere, was even reported to have purchased the controversial Galleria de Legazpi cockpit arena for P200 million. His family reportedly owns a luxury residence equipped with an elevator.

The source also recalled that shortly after the 1986 EDSA Revolution, the DPWH regional office in Bicol was exposed as being run by a “mafia,” tagged by the Ministry of Finance Intelligence Bureau as the Magnificent Seven—non-Bicolano engineers who allegedly controlled lucrative substandard projects. President Aquino had ordered the group investigated.

Despite the long-standing concerns and “glaring interventions” of lawmakers in project implementation and in the appointment of regional and district engineers, the source noted that no official reports of ghost projects surfaced in Bicol in the past three decades.

Following the ICI probe, DPWH regional director Virgilio Eduarte maintained that Bicol—which received an P86-billion budget for 2024—has “no report of ghost projects.”

However, Filipino-American journalist Cecilio Francisco, based in California and currently in Bicol to investigate both the public works scandal and the quarry-related degradation of Mayon Volcano, disputed this. He corroborated the claims of the anonymous official, saying the ICI is taking a hardline focus on the Bicol infrastructure mess, which already drove a district administrative officer to suicide.

Francisco cited a Bicol Mail report more than a year ago revealing that Bicol has among the poorest-quality roads in the country, with cracks and damage appearing barely a year after completion—a situation widely attributed to corruption and never contested by DPWH or local lawmakers.

He further questioned earlier claims that no ghost projects existed in Bicol, pointing to the mountainous town of Bacacay, Albay, where billions in funds for unfinished road openings and concreting—said to be insertions by a party-list lawmaker—remain unaccounted for.

He also recalled that during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, two contractors’ associations from Albay and Camarines Sur jointly petitioned Malacañang to investigate the Bicol public works office for alleged large-scale corruption. The petition, published as a half-page advertisement in a national daily, sought to “decongest” DPWH-Bicol of powerful insider-contractors who were, they claimed, bankrupting legitimate competitors.

Led by the late Rodolfo Madrid of the Albay Professional Constructors Association, the group lamented that more than 150 contractors who used to participate in public bidding at the DPWH regional office had dwindled drastically due to rampant “table bidding” on projects allegedly pre-arranged for favored public works officials and members of Congress.