The P(H)iggybank
- The New Builder
- Oct 7
- 4 min read
By: The Final Draft
Cartoon by: Clara Kuda
The Philippines is drowning–in floods, neglect, and debt. The rain, without fail, always reveals a cyclic scenario: students wading through rising floodwaters, evacuation centers being filled to the brim, and government officials offering the same promise of a better tomorrow. Flooding in the Philippines is no longer a seasonal inconvenience, but rather the epitome of failure in accounting, engineering, and public service.
As an archipelagic nation located along the Pacific Typhoon Belt, the Philippines experiences an average of 20 typhoons per year. In such extreme events, heavy precipitation, intense wind, storm surge, and landslides result in damages not only to infrastructures, but to the lives of the communities experiencing the aftermath as well. With the anticipation of this number of typhoons annually; ideally, this predictability should have allowed more proactive solutions–yet reality proves otherwise.
Flooding is not just a natural disaster, it is also a mirror that reflects the country’s deepest dysfunctions. It incurs economic losses, affecting infrastructure, agriculture, and overall productivity. According to the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities in 2022, heavy flooding and prolonged droughts may result in $124 billion in losses to the local economy between 2022 and 2050. Under the glare of public scrutiny, these projects and substandard work have been revealed to be linked to corrupt practices. Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. calls out during his most recent State of the Nation Address, “Mahiya naman kayo,” shaming contractors and officials involved in kickbacks linked to these failed projects.
Everyone pays their taxes, yet not everyone can feel the benefits that come with the salary deduction. Between July 2022 and May 2025, the government funded 9,855 flood-control projects worth over P545 billion. The paradox is haunting: billions “spent,” yet progress is little to none. This issue is beyond the finances, it seeps through the system, from the design to the execution. Now the Filipino people pose the question: Is this where our taxes go?
Flood-control infrastructures are oftentimes treated as a checklist, proposing solutions without addressing the larger systems that govern how water flows through cities and landscapes. Outdated designs, poor maintenance, and lack of integration with urban planning turn these projects into bigger wounds rather than solutions.
One engineer from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) blatantly reveals that the projects in Bulacan have been consistently substandard or nonexistent for the past six years. Engr. Brice Hernandez claimed that all projects in the DPWH office in their district failed to meet specifications due to poor planning, corruption, and lack of proper monitoring.
For a country that heavily glorifies the field of engineering, the Philippines has never truly reckoned what it means to be an engineer. The career path itself lacks nuance–always mentioning the salary grade but never bringing up the burden that comes with the hardhat. As the country’s quintessential engineering university, Mapúa University (MU) prides itself as the home of builders. But the university also carries a burden: the stain of its alumni who traded the hardhat for cash.
One of MU’s infamous engineers is the freshly resigned Secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). Assigned in 2022, former Secretary Manuel M. Bonoan once stood as a testament of Mapúa’s dedication in shaping nation-builders. Yet when scrutiny fell on the department he led, Engr. Bonoan stepped down, unable, or unwilling, to face the consequences of his tenure’s actions head on. Resignation became his blueprint, avoidance his design.
Bonoan is not the only Cardinal embroiled in the controversy. In the third hearing on the irregularities in flood-control projects with contractor Pacifico “Curlee” Discaya II, the contractor drops the names of lawmakers and DPWH executives accused of siphoning funds from his construction firm after it won a government project bid. Among those is Project Director Ramon Arriola III of the Unified Project Management Offices; Arriola also serves as the president of the Mapúa Institute of Technology Civil Engineering-Environmental and Sanitary Engineering Alumni Association (MITCEAAI).
Another name echoing during the Senate probes is Engr. Roberto Bernardo. Appointed Undersecretary for Regional Operations in Visayas, NCR, and Region IV-B in 2017, Bernardo is responsible for overseeing all infrastructure projects implemented by the Department but funded under the budget of various line agencies. Prior to the allegations, Bernardo was given The Outstanding Mapúan (TOM) award in the specialized fields of endeavor, specifically for government service. The irony continues to write itself as one of the dismissed engineers admitted that Bernardo was one of the DPWH officials who requested for at least 25% of the kickbacks. They are no professionals, they are profiteers with the license that guise their parasitism; when the rot runs deep, this depravity is no longer an irregularity, but a normal act of destruction against the nation itself.
The roads cannot be paved by those who don’t drive through the concrete. Engineers who do not consider the community their projects should serve are not builders–they are wreckers. Demolishers of homes, families, and lives. Engineering, when done correctly, creates solutions. However, engineering—no matter how outstanding it may be—cannot fix what corruption breaks.
The issue has opened the floodgates for bureaucratic investigations. Every Senate hearing, every whistleblower testimony, and every revelation of kickbacks received and delivered is not just an indictment of individuals–it is more about the entrenched systems that allowed such malpractices to persist.
Public officials who sell out a project betrays more than their conscience; they also betray the nation. Resignation is too soft for the hardships the Filipino have to endure under these incompetencies. It is not a solution, but rather an evasion for accountability. Redressing surpasses stepping away: it calls for a systemic change to occur to regain the integrity of the profession in order to amend the situation.
The burden lies on the government, officials entrusted by democracy. Every peso pocketed erodes not just the asphalt, but the defenses of a community as well. The exposé reveals that corruption does not merely delay progress–it dismantles it, leaving citizens to pay the price twice: once in taxes, and again in suffering. This issue may be the tip of the iceberg, but citizens remain hopeful for the future as more Filipinos are becoming socially aware. A future where the Philippines, an archipelago, learns how to live with the waters–not drown in them.
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