Farm-to-market roads linked to Zaldy, Romualdez probed

The Senate is investigating how congressional amendments led to billions in overpriced farm-to-market roads (FMR) for areas associated with former House appropriations chair Zaldy Co and former speaker Martin Romualdez.

- NEIL JAYSON SERVALLOS

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate finance committee, said that based on their review of the 2023 to 2025 budget documents, at least half of all FMRs for 2025 were not even part of the verified list of priorities of the Department of Agriculture (DA).

"This means that they were replaced by either the Congress or Senate. I just don't know which, but this was altered during the budget process," Gatchalian told radio dzBB.

Gatchalian clarified that the changes were not technically "inserted," and that the DA's list of areas needing FMRs were replaced with another list with different sets of areas.

"It's not inserted in a sense because the Department of Agriculture submitted a list, and that list was altered. So those were amendments," he said.

He said the DA's master plan had already undergone validation and site verification, with each proposed road having been measured, costed and included in the National Expenditure Program submitted to Congress.

But when the lawmakers altered the list, those changes bypassed DA validation, resulting in projects being tagged as "for later release" (FLR).

"That's what the DA's infrastructure program head said. The master plan was not with them, hence it was tagged 'FLR.' Either it will be delayed or the projects will no longer be implemented because they no longer correspond to their master plan," Gatchalian said.

During DA's budget hearing last week, senators flagged allegedly overpriced constructions of FMRS around the country with Bicol topping the list of regions and resigned Ako Bicol congressman Co's construction company among the leading FMR contractors.

"These are the top two officials of Congress. If we will examine, the food basket is in Regions 2 and 3 Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan. They are the country's food granary yet they are not at the top recipients of farmto-market roads," Gatchalian said.