DPWH politics as usual: Guilas replaces Manao

HAPPY WEEKEND
Gina Dizon

What is happening at Department of Public Works and Highways-Cordillera Administrative Region? Is the newly installed DPWH-CAR Regional Director Enrico Guilas going to do wonders in this corruption-plagued department to rid the government agency of irregularities?

Will engineer Guilas be any better than his predecessor OIC- director engineer Roy Manao and former regional director engineer Mariano Alquiza under whose watch State of the Nation Address projects of Halsema Highway were alleged to have been ridden with corruption?

Yes, Enrico Guilas is the cabalen of the one who appointed him, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. What good tidings will Guilas bring to the Cordilleras? Will Guilas’ assumption as the new DPWH director correct the frustrating corrupt practices happening at the department, or does it take on the normal practice of passing the buck to another?

Meanwhile, it’s election time and candidates are looking where to get money to finance campaign sorties. Perceived as the most corrupt government agency based on a survey by Pulse Asia, DPWH apparently is a promising source of money every election campaign.

By the way, Kalinga Rep. Manuel Agyao and caretaker-solon for Mountain Province seems to be happy as he is apparently ignored in the Halsema-plagued corruption issues.Any news to share Congressman Agyao?

Meantime, mixed views are heard in the grapevine and on opinion and news sections in papers and blogs about the replacement of Manao to Agyao. Some sectors want Manao to be retained.

In an open letter, the United Baguio-Benguet Contractors Association, the Contractors against Crime and Corruption and the Association of Licensed Benguet Contractors are seeking the retention of Manao as head of the regional office of the DPWH. They said that Manao “has held the office efficiently as demonstrated by his tactfulness and effective supervision over the SONA projects of the government.”

Mountain Province Gov. Maximo Dalog is ‘saddened’ as Manao’s replacement ‘came at a time when the people are starting to gain from the fruits of the President's trust and confidence to one of our brothers’.

Yet, Mountain Province-based Volunteers Against Corruption spokesperson Juniper Dominguez say Dalog’s statement is ‘ridiculous.’ Why? Because, ‘The people of Mountain Province know that those grouted ripraps are grouted palpak (substandard), and the DPWH-CAR through Roy Manao had been assuring the President and the people that the SONA projects will be completed by December 2009. Yet there was No completed project that President GMA inaugurated last December 2009”, Juniper Dominguez said in his comment to an article published earlier by the website Mountain Province.net.

As clear as crystal waters, the slow-moving implementation of the corruption-plagued SONA projects of the Halsema Highway since 2006 is still not completed despite assurances that the project will be finished by the end of 2009.

Could this perpetuated delay the reason why Cordilleran Manao was replaced by Kapampangan Guilas? Or is it for another pressing reason? The bottom line stands, whoever sits as DPWH director perpetuates the corrupt system unless serious reforms are done either by a director who will be strong in pushing for reforms or the government itself checking its own vulnerable systems like requiring actual expense costs of project materials.

The standing practice is that project costs are bloated to high heavens so percentage cuts for government officials (SOPs) are higher. Granting that actual costs make no room for 'percentage shares', what remains is the contractor to do his job with his 10 percent contractor’s fee to answer for his labor.

People have groaned and continue complaining of government's half- hearted response to poverty, and angry to point of being jaded in this miserable country perpetuated by corrupt systems and patronage politics! Filipinos have suffered so much in this country ranked First in corruption according to an earlier survey done by Hongkong-based PERC (Political and Economic Risk Consultancy). We are not proud to be major exporters of migrant workers cleaning the toilets of other nationalities, or are we? Anyway, that calls for another story.