Bulacan flood control works get \u2018fraud audit\u2019<\/a><\/p>\nLast week, in Calumpit town, he found a river dike already damaged and practically rendered useless due to shoddy workmanship less than three years after undergoing \u201crehabilitation\u2019\u2019 to the tune of P96.4 million.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMore than disappointed, I\u2019m getting very angry,\u201d he said upon seeing the Baliwag project on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Economic sabotage<\/p>\n
Marcos said all officials who authorized and conspired in \u201cghost\u201d or faulty infrastructure projects would be suspended and charged with graft, malversation of public funds, and falsification of public documents.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis project, for instance, has been reported as \u2018completed.\u2019 But we can clearly see that it is not. So immediately, that\u2019s falsification. That\u2019s already a very big violation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd for the big ones, I am thinking very hard if we can file economic sabotage against the personalities behind them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Had the flood control projects been properly implemented, the President said, storm-related agricultural damage in the region in July would have been significantly reduced.<\/p>\n
Local execs \u2018not aware\u2019<\/p>\n
Baliwag City officials on Wednesday said they were kept in the dark about the project inspected by the President.<\/p>\n
Vice Mayor Ferdie Estrella, speaking on behalf of Mayor Sonia Estrella and the city government, said they were shocked by the revelation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not aware of such a project,\u201d Estrella, a former three-term mayor, told the Inquirer.<\/p>\n
He said local government units were often excluded from the planning and monitoring of projects undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is, national projects are just brought down to the towns without the knowledge of the local chief executives,\u201d Estrella said.<\/p>\n
No flooding here<\/p>\n
\u201cWe only learn about them through public postings or when the barangay officials report the contractors\u2019 activities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Some residents also expressed disbelief. A retired judge who lives near the inspected project site told the Inquirer, \u201cThat\u2019s at the back of our house. We are not aware of any flooding there. We do not experience flooding.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Baliwag project supposedly involved the construction of a concrete river wall stretching for 220 meters.<\/p>\n
On paper, work started on Feb. 25 and was completed on June 30, way ahead of the Oct. 22 deadline, with the DPWH Bulacan First District Engineering Office having fully paid the P55.73-million contract to SYMS Construction Trading.<\/p>\n
For blacklisting<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we put up the website [sumbongsapangulo.ph], so many people have been writing in, and this is a perfect example of the abuse being committed by some of these contractors,\u201d Mr. Marcos said.<\/p>\n
The President said he had also learned that the river wall was not among the 9,855 flood control projects worth P545 billion that the DPWH implemented from July 2022 to May 2025.<\/p>\n
He said a legal team was already working on the cases that could be filed against contractors of anomalous projects.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I]n the meantime, we are continuing to go through the records of the DPWH and all the big contractors to see if their reports match the complaints being brought to us by the public,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The President said he had ordered the DPWH to immediately put SYMS Construction on its blacklist and prepare criminal cases against the company.<\/p>\n
16 projects, P931 million<\/p>\n
All other public works projects being undertaken by the company would be scrutinized.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate reply from Sally Santos, who was listed in DPWH documents as the sole proprietor of SYMS Construction, when reporters tried to call her given address in Malolos, Bulacan.<\/p>\n
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Based on the list of flood control projects released by the President last week, SYMS Construction has bagged 16 government projects in Bulacan for the past three years, all worth P931.2 million.\/abc \u2014With reports from Luisa Cabato and Carmela Reyes-Estrope<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALL GOOD\u2014ON PAPER President Marcos led a surprise inspection of a \u201cghost\u201d river wall project in Barangay Piel,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-84026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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