DPWH Has to Go: BBM Should Give Way to Reform and Let the PPP Center Handle Infrastructure

Billions have been poured into flood control projects, yet entire communities remain underwater — not only in floodwaters, but in fraud.

The Department of Public Works and Highways, long accused of overpricing and phantom projects, has become the very dam blocking reform. (Photo: Department of Public Works and Highways Facebook)

No less than President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. saw it with his own eyes when he visited a flood control project in Baliuag, Bulacan.

What he found was not protection for a beleaguered barangay, but a cruel joke: a ghost project, without a single sheet of metal to its name. His anger was immediate — blacklist the contractor, file a case.

But anger alone cannot stem the flood of corruption. That single ghost project cost taxpayers ₱55.7 million — a monument not to progress but to plunder, a reward for “completion” on paper rather than protection on the ground.

And what a rot it is.

This brazen theft of public funds, money meant to spare our people from ruin, has torn open the truth for everyone to see: the current system is broken beyond repair.

President Marcos' anger was immediate upon having seen with his very own eyes numerous overpriced, substandard, and "useless" projects. But anger alone cannot stem the flood of corruption.

It rewards connivance, not competence. It enriches the unscrupulous while entire barangays wade through misery.

Consider this: a ₱1-billion bridge in Isabela collapsing under the weight of a single truck loaded with concrete — not a symbol of connectivity but a gravestone for public trust.

The ongoing congressional hearings have stripped the varnish off this decay.

The parade of slush funds, the quiet knowledge shared among employees, the whispered admissions that everyone knew — these are not weeds in the garden; they are the soil itself.

The Department of Public Works and Highways, long accused of overpricing and phantom projects, has become the very dam blocking reform. It is time to break that dam.

We are a country staggering under a ₱16-trillion debt, a burden future generations will have to bear.

To keep the DPWH as it stands is to keep paying for rot. We must excise this malignancy and build a new system — one that cannot be gamed, one that shines a light on every peso spent, one that finally aligns public trust with public works.

The answer lies in the Public-Private Partnership Center.

Here is an institution structured to withstand the glare of public scrutiny, with performance-based contracts and bidding systems that favor efficiency and competition.

Third-party validators can vet every costing — for flood control, school buildings, farm-to-market roads, and bridges. Ghost projects cannot thrive in the sunlight.

DPWH personnel need not be cast aside.

Redeployed, they can survey, design, and act as liaisons between government and the PPP Center.

They can channel funds where they are needed most, ensuring that the first peso from the treasury goes to the first barangay under water — not the first pocket in line.

This is not just an infrastructure issue — it is a moral one. Every missing dike is a betrayal. Every collapsed bridge is a broken promise. Every ghost project fractures the nation’s soul a little more.

We can keep patching leaks in a rotting system, or we can build a new one that makes corruption impossible.

It is time to retire the DPWH as we know it. It is time to entrust our nation’s infrastructure to a system that rewards transparency and performance — and punishes fraud not with token cases, but with extinction.

The choice is clear. We must choose to build — not just roads, not just bridges — but a future worthy of the generations who will pay for it.

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