Why school infra demands the same scrutiny as flood control
The exposure of corruption in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ flood control projects has once again revealed the depth of rot in the country’s infrastructure system.
Billions of pesos meant to protect communities from flooding have instead lined the pockets of contractors, engineers and their political patrons.
The revelations are shocking but hardly surprising. For decades, stories of ghost projects, overpriced contracts, and shoddy outputs have circulated, often dismissed as isolated incidents rather than symptoms of a systemic disease.
What makes this scandal different is its scale and brazenness, now undeniable because of whistleblowers, audits, and investigative reporting.
Yet while flood control has triggered outrage, it should not remain the only focus. Scrutiny must also extend to DPWH’s classroom construction and educational infrastructure, where the stakes are no less urgent and the opportunities for corruption no less tempting.
Education is hailed as the cornerstone of national development, but the reality inside public schools tells another story.
Students still cram into overcrowded classrooms or study under makeshift sheds that serve as long-term learning spaces. Year after year, the government trumpets allocations to address shortages, yet the deficit persists.
Many functional classrooms today were built through parent-teacher associations or private donors, not government projects. The contradiction between massive spending and dismal results cannot be explained away by population growth alone. If the budget is supposedly enough, why do gaps remain as wide as ever? The answer lies in inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption.
The DPWH has long been tasked with building classrooms despite its core mandate in roads, bridges and flood control. Officials justify this based on engineering capacity, but the arrangement benefits contractors and politicians more than students.
The very agency under fire for flood control anomalies is the same one handling classroom construction. To assume one set of projects is riddled with corruption while another is magically clean is reckless. Reports of classrooms collapsing a few years after being built, projects dragging on indefinitely, and schools that exist only on paper already point to deep rot.
The mechanics are predictable. Contractors win bids not for qualifications but for connections. Budgets are padded, materials substandard and oversight perfunctory.
Local politicians often look the other way if they are not themselves complicit. The result: projects cost more, deliver less, and betray the people. In flood control, this means communities remain vulnerable to inundation.
In classrooms, it means children’s right to a safe learning environment is denied. One scandal leaves homes underwater; the other leaves minds underdeveloped. Both are national betrayals.
Lawmakers insist they cannot benefit from classroom construction because of safeguards, yet questions remain about whether the 4 percent GDP allocation for education truly reaches the grassroots.
Safeguards have never prevented corruption elsewhere. Paper requirements and procedural rules are meaningless when institutions are too weak or too compromised to enforce them.
These very procedures often shield officials from accountability. The Commission on Audit flags irregularities but lacks the power to enforce consequences.
Congress, supposedly the overseer, is riddled with conflicts of interest. The executive reshuffles and creates anti-graft bodies that look good on paper but deliver little. The problem is not the absence of rules but the absence of political will.
A telling example came in 2023, when the Department of Education and DPWH renewed their partnership for the School Building Program. DPWH would build, DepEd would monitor.
Yet by 2024, the COA flagged 215.9 billion pesos worth of unimplemented and delayed projects, including school buildings. This proves that renewed commitments still fail to translate into classrooms on the ground.
What is at stake is not only the efficient use of funds but the credibility of government’s promise to prioritize education. Every peso lost to corruption in school projects is a peso stolen directly from children.
Every substandard classroom condemns students to unsafe, undignified conditions. This is not just a financial crime but a moral one. Politicians who allow this while mouthing platitudes about education are hypocrites who profit from misery.
Investigations into DPWH’s flood control projects must therefore expand. Limiting inquiries to one category risks creating the illusion of reform while leaving the broader system untouched.
Corruption does not respect project categories. It festers wherever money can be stolen and oversight evaded. To clean up one corner of DPWH while ignoring another guarantees anomalies will simply migrate.
The proposed independent commission probing DPWH anomalies must cast its net wider. Its mandate should include classrooms, evacuation centers, multipurpose halls and every project where public funds are at risk. Anything less is cosmetic reform.
Communities must also step up. Parents, teachers, and students know whether promised classrooms exist, whether they are safe and whether they meet standards. They are not powerless.
Citizens can demand access to project lists, contractor names and completion reports. With digital tools such as geotagging, satellite images and open-data platforms, they can verify whether projects on paper match realities on the ground.
Corruption thrives in darkness; it shrinks under scrutiny. Civil society and media must keep the spotlight on DPWH not only during scandals but across all its projects.
The government, for its part, must prove seriousness by prosecuting those responsible, not merely reshuffling them. Blacklisting erring contractors, firing compromised officials, and filing cases should be minimum requirements.
The culture of impunity, where scandals erupt and fade without resolution, must end. Otherwise, the cycle will repeat, and the losers will always be the ordinary citizens who depend on public infrastructure for survival and development.
The lesson is clear: corruption in infrastructure is not abstract. It is a direct assault on human welfare. Flood control anomalies leave communities at risk of disaster.
Classroom anomalies rob children of dignity, opportunity, and their right to education. To focus on one while ignoring the other is to pretend that some betrayals matter more than others. In truth, all betrayals matter, especially when they strike the most vulnerable.
The DPWH scandal must be treated as an opening to confront the larger system of collusion among contractors, politicians and bureaucrats. But this requires more than inquiries. It requires structural reform: school building programs must be removed from DPWH and entrusted to agencies directly accountable to the education sector.
Only then can citizens be assured that funds for classrooms will serve children, not cronies. Investigations must widen, accountability must be real and reforms must dismantle the very arrangements that enable corruption.
Otherwise, classrooms will remain unbuilt, children will continue to study under sheds and the rhetoric of education as a national priority will remain hollow. The Filipino people cannot afford to let this happen again.
Leah Amor S. Cortez is associate professor at the Faculty of Science, Technology, and Mathematics and executive director and provost of the Philippine Normal University South Luzon; Arlyne C. Marasigan is professor and fellow at the Educational Policy Research and Development Office; Levi E. Elipane is associate professor and deputy dean of the College of Advanced Studies of the Philippine Normal University; and Allen A. Espinosa is professor and fellow at the Educational Policy Research and Development Office. They may be reached at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected], respectively. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Philippine Normal University.
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