MANILA, Philippines — To prevent the funding of ghost or non-existent projects, the Senate will require the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to submit exact geographic coordinates and station numbers for projects to be funded under the proposed P107 billion for flood control in 2027.
Speaking to radio dzBB yesterday, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian outlined the strict safeguards following the Department of Budget and Management’s announcement of the allocation, stressing that leaving project locations vague gives district engineers too much leeway to duplicate funding.
“We added all the details on all DPWH projects, and those are what we call station numbers, coordinates, so that the projects won’t be repeated or piled on top of each other,” Gatchalian explained.
Aside from specific locators, he said that the chamber will also require feasibility studies for the proposed flood interventions to ensure that these are effective and not just piecemeal solutions.
Beyond flood control, Gatchalian vowed to implement a strict transparency policy for all legislative insertions to eliminate hidden pork barrel funds.
All amendments introduced by senators will be debated openly on the floor and published online.
“We will strictly implement what we did last year, that all amendments were done in plenary,” Gatchalian said.
As the Senate begins its preliminary review of the spending plan, Gatchalian also flagged the massive chunk of the proposed P7.2-trillion national budget allocated solely for debt servicing.
“Out of the 7.2 trillion, almost 1.2 trillion will go to repayment of debt. That is huge,” Gatchalian noted.
“Almost one-seventh of our budget will go to interest payments and amortization,” he stressed.
The Senate President stated that lawmakers will closely scrutinize these figures during the budget briefings to determine if the country’s debt trajectory is actually trending downward.
DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon is behind the ombudsman’s push for public-private partnerships in large-scale government infrastructure, saying he has always advocated for such whenever viable.
Dizon made the remark after Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla criticized the poor quality of infrastructure undertaken by DPWH and its private partner-contractors.
Come clean on ‘leadership fund’
Meanwhile, Manila 6th district and House committee on human rights chair Bienvenido Abante Jr. called on their congressional colleagues in the Senate to come clean on the so-called leadership fund allocated to senators in the 2025 national budget.
Abante noted that there was no such thing in the House.
“I was once a vice chairman of the appropriations committee, but we had no leadership fund for that purpose. That is why when it was mentioned in the news, that was the only time I learned there was such a thing as leadership fund,” Abante said.
“That is why it is very important and necessary that we check on its veracity and see for ourselves what does ‘leadership fund’ really mean,” he added.
Abante issued the statement after former public works secretary Manuel Bonoan testified before the Sandiganbayan – as witness in the plunder and graft suit against former senator Ramon Revilla Jr. – that all senators were entitled to the leadership fund.
Bonoan said he had discussions on the “parameters” of the fund with former Senate president Juan Miguel Zubiri and that they agreed that each senator would be allocated at least P500 million, with the chairpersons of major committees getting up to P1 billion.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson has described the alleged leadership fund as “worse than (the congressional) pork barrel.”
The Supreme Court had struck down the pork barrel as unconstitutional.