Abolish the district engineer's office

We all know how notorious corruption is among district engineers (DEs), especially in stealing taxpayers' money meant for infrastructure projects.

- IRIS GONZALES

In fact, they have turned out to be proxies of corrupt lawmakers and partners in crime.

The DEs have become all too powerful, with so much leeway to fake public biddings for multimillion-peso infrastructure projects.

As I noted in my column on Thursday, a DE's gambling habits have spawned ghost projects in some parts of Bulacan.

Justice Antonio Carpio, reacting to my column, said DEs should be abolished because they indeed have become proxies for congressmen.

This suggestion makes sense. The DE who is addicted to gambling used licenses of contractors — with a promise to give them five percent of the project cost — to facilitate the release of funds for various flood control projects.

But as I earlier wrote, these flood control projects were supposed to be built somewhere in Bulacan, usually in areas where monitoring was difficult and yet, the projects never materialized. And this has been going on for years, according to my sources.

Frustrated contractors have attested to this ex-DE's casino addiction, saying it was the reason why many of the projects within his district never materialized. Part of the funds were used for his gambling addiction.

In 2010, according to a report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, DPWH under then secretary Rogelio Singson launched reforms to improve the integrity of its procurement process, starting with standard unit cost analysis per project before going to public bidding across the board.