Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco appeared before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on Monday, September 8, to reject allegations that he was behind questionable flood-control project insertions in the national budget and instead shifted attention to other lawmakers.
Committee chair Sen. Rodante Marcoleta allowed Tiangco to present evidence he claimed was being blocked in the House. As a courtesy, Tiangco was not sworn in and was even permitted to cross-examine fellow resource persons.
“First of all, I cannot make insertions because I’m not a member of the bicam,” Tiangco told senators, dismissing accusations linking him to a P529-million project. He asserted that then-appropriations chair Elizaldy Co had actually pushed for around P13.8 billion worth of flood-control allocations in the 2025 budget.
Tiangco further explained that some projects were concealed through schemes called “parking” and “sagasa.” Parking, he said, involves asking permission from the district’s congressman, while sagasa forces a project into a district budget without the local representative’s consent.
Oriental Mindoro Governor Humerlito “Bonz” Dolor also testified, exposing how his province’s flood-control budget ballooned from P12.7 billion in 2022–2025 under the National Expenditure Program to P30.2 billion in the enacted budget, reflecting P17.8 billion in congressional insertions. He flagged 135 projects over four years as either unnecessary or overpriced, likening some flood barriers to “parang boulevard” that failed to stop flooding.
Dolor said contractors were billing as high as P1 billion per kilometer, or P1 million per meter, before DPWH later adjusted costs to P700 million. “Overpriced na, substandard pa po. Ito po ang problema,” he said, adding that some contractors even worked at night to avoid public scrutiny.
The governor further recalled being told by a former DPWH regional director that up to 42 percent of project funds were lost to kickbacks—including a 25 percent cut “sa taas,” five percent as “parking fee,” and another 12 percent for other expenses.
Dolor concluded that if DPWH had implemented Oriental Mindoro’s P12-billion master flood plan submitted in 2019, the province’s flooding problems “more or less” could have been resolved.
