Deflecting praise for his recent actions, Batangas 1st district Rep. Leandro Legarda Leviste has pitched a way for authorities to truly get to the culprits of substandard or "ghost" flood control projects in the country. (Video courtesy of PTV)
00:00Actually, I would like to take this opportunity to set in perspective what is the issue.
00:07It is not a single incident of attempted...
00:14It is not a single incident last Friday. That is the issue here.
00:20So, hindi lang isang beses?
00:22The real issue here is the substandard projects of BPWH.
00:30Which we have been investigating for the past weeks or months, in fact.
00:35As there's some signage there, we actually personally funded the repair of the bridge portion of this Binambang River project last year pa.
00:46This is not about the amounts that have been mentioned in the media about the incident last week.
00:58It is about whether the public is getting its money's worth on the supposedly over 1 trillion pesos that has been spent on flood control projects.
01:12And there have already been many hearings about this.
01:17But I think there's been a lack of solutions.
01:27And that's something that I would also like to bring more to light tomorrow.
01:33But one is that we should have a comprehensive technical audit of DPWH projects.
01:40Because if we're only asserting that nandadaya ang mga contractors, kaya wala pa pong mga nasampahan ng kaso.
01:48Pero kung i-audit natin ang mga projects, which are out there in the open, all across the country and on the Sumbong sa Pangulo website,
02:03then we have evidence for much bigger cases to be filed.
02:09And if I can tie it together then, the case that should be being discussed is more than just an incident with one official of DPWH.
02:21It is why in this particular project, the public paid for 15 meters and only got 4 meters.
02:29Which raises the question, in the 1 trillion pesos of flood control projects that we paid for, how much worth did we actually get?
02:39Okay, pero gusto lang kasi sinabi ni Senator Lakson yung 360 milyon, merong ganun po bang offer talaga ang, ang, ang, ang, ang, Bukas na nang talakayin yun.
02:50Bukas na nang talakayin yun.
02:52Security threats po ba?
02:54Oo, nabanggit po si Senator Pink na sinabihan daw ni si Senator Loren na dapat ano kayo sa security nyo, ah, cautious talaga.
03:01Bukas na nang po.
03:02Pero, ang, ano lang, yung comment lang kung magkano yung offer.
03:05Basta ako po ay isang representante ng aking distrito at ang dapat natin ipocus, how we can fix these substandard projects.
03:15Number one, I was presented with a national expenditure program for 2026 of the first district of Batangas, which had hundreds of millions of new flood control projects proposed.
03:30All, if not almost all of them, without feasibility studies, and some of them, extensions of these projects which are already damaged.
03:41And I would submit that we should not choose between the flood control funding or the funding of other projects.
03:50Because if we can establish that in the past years that the country paid for over a trillion pesos in flood control projects and didn't get what it paid for, based on technical audits,
04:03then we should get the contractors to repair, if not extend and improve upon these flood control projects at no cost to the government.
04:12So, again, I would just like to put in context, this is more than just about the incident being discussed.
04:20This is about how we can get our money's worth on the one trillion pesos in flood control projects,
04:24and whether it is really wise for the government to spend another 250 billion pesos plus for new projects in 2026,
04:32when instead, if we just do audits like this, we can ask the contractors of the previous projects to cover the cost of repairing and extending them.
04:40About how many security threats to the new project is?
04:45Yesterday we should be able to help.
04:46When did my comments, the engineer who is arrested, who gets arrested and driving to you to use,
04:51you asked your engineer to get to the location,
04:52what did you comment about?
04:53According to the Secretary's office, let us build a life.
04:57We should be able to help you, sir.
04:59Why did it not plan?
05:00Because there is...
05:01Well, it's not just about how manyальное report projects that we have made this project with.
05:04Where did my district engineer come from here,
05:05but why did my district engineer come from here to the island,
05:09Bayan ninyo, sa Taal, bakit siya nagsubot ka doon? Bakit siya may dalang 3 million pesos?
05:23Without commenting on that incident, because I really think that it's more in the public interest to discuss these projects.
05:30We have publicly been questioning these DPWH projects. And in this district alone, there's over 1.5 billion of DPWH projects on the Sumbong sa Pangulo website.
05:45And if, let's say half of that is missing, that they didn't deliver what we paid for, then we would propose that DPWH ask the contractors to...
06:15...fix the damaged projects that were never built according to the bid specifications in the first place.
06:24Now, you can draw from that inference that there's a big value at stake here.
06:28That we want the contractors to shell out the cost for the hundreds of millions of missing materials.
06:43And maybe that's a motive for someone to try and stop that effort.
06:50But I would just say that what we're trying to fix is not only the incident regarding one personnel.
07:00It's we're trying to fix the hundreds of millions of pesos of missing material on the flood control projects in the first district of Batangas.
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