Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson returned to a familiar refrain on Monday, August 17, posting on X a historical breakdown of Department of Public Works and Highways flood control spending and arguing that nearly two trillion pesos over 15 years has bought the country little more than submerged streets.
“FLOOD CONTROL VS UNCONTROLLED FLOOD,” the senator wrote, pairing a chart of annual DPWH flood management appropriations with footage of a flooded thoroughfare. According to Lacson’s data, P1.939 trillion funded the DPWH flood control management program under three presidents from 2011 to 2025 — “and the result is uncontrolled flood.”
The figure is one Lacson has invoked repeatedly since mid-2025, when he chaired the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s inquiry into anomalous flood control projects. In an August 2025 privilege speech titled “Flooded Gates of Corruption,” he alleged that only about 40 percent of flood control funds are actually spent on the projects themselves, with the remainder siphoned off through what he called a “pie-sharing” system of kickbacks, commissions, and bribes among DPWH officials, contractors, and politicians. Lacson has estimated that around P180 billion allocated for flood control was diverted to ghost projects since 2016.
The chart Lacson shared traces a steep climb in annual appropriations, from roughly P11.3 billion in 2011 to about P372.8 billion in 2025 — with the sharpest increases concentrated in the last three budget years. The scandal itself erupted after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. used his July 2025 State of the Nation Address to call out substandard and possibly nonexistent flood control works, ordering a review of all such projects from the previous three years.
The controversy has since produced arrests, resignations, and criminal complaints. Former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan stepped down in August 2025 and was succeeded by Vince Dizon, who has filed corruption cases before the Office of the Ombudsman against personnel of the Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office and private contractors. Former senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. surrendered in January 2026 over an alleged P92.8 million ghost flood control project in Pandi, Bulacan, and later had a not-guilty plea entered on his behalf by the Sandiganbayan. Contractors Pacifico “Curlee” and Cezarah “Sarah” Discaya — whose companies, according to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, secured hundreds of projects worth billions — became central figures in the Senate hearings.
More than a year on, the fallout continues to reshape budget policy. The DPWH removed P252 billion worth of locally funded flood control projects from its proposed 2026 budget, Rappler reported, and the Senate is now moving to require exact geographic coordinates and station numbers for projects under the proposed P107 billion flood control allocation for 2027, a measure meant to guard against ghost projects. Lacson, who stepped down as Blue Ribbon chair in October 2025, has more recently been trading accusations with Senator Alan Peter Cayetano and flagging alleged reclamation activity in Taguig disguised as flood control work.
Lacson’s Monday post drew renewed attention to a question that has dogged the administration since the scandal broke: where the money went, and why the flooding persists.
