My father, who passed away in 2001, shared with me a few stories about his dealings with government personnel who were involved in infrastructure projects.
One time I accompanied him to a Congressman’s house because he wanted to get a government building construction project. He hesitated, but he met the Congressman anyway. After stating the purpose of his visit, that Congressman’s wife bluntly told my father that he can get a project but there is a catch, only if he gives an advance equivalent to ten per cent of the project’s cost.
He was surprised at the bluntness and directness of the condition.. The project had a budget of ten million pesos, so what he was being asked was to give a million pesos and he will be awarded the project some months later.
The Congressman was the godfather of my brother. He was my father’s compadre. He spent a lot of time together with my father during many celebrations. But that did not factor in. That did not matter. A percentage cut is a percentage cut, no matter what the relationships were. The Congressman was firm; the advance was ten percent. My father did not take it. He did not want to deal with those percentages. So we went home empty-handed, with my father pledging not to make that visit again.
There was also a time when he told me he was asked by a government engineer to advise him about the construction of a big project owned by a politician. This politician said he thought my father was an engineer working for the government. His services were no longer sought because he was not working in government, meaning that this politician was expecting free services from my father as he did to government engineers.
In another instance, my father told me that some of his laborers were asked by a relative who was working on a bridge project to sign payrolls even if they did not do any work on that project. I learned later that that was called “payroll padding”.
My father specialized in residential construction although he had a few government projects, the biggest of which is the Human Resource Development Center of the Leyte Normal University.
The point I want to stress here is that corruption in infrastructure projects is an old practice. It recently came into the limelight because the practice has gone berserk with those involved no longer afraid of being exposed or known to be corrupt. It is now an open secret.
This open secret reminds me of the time I went to the home of a government infrastructure official. The official I was visiting was in the living room. His guest was an official of the contractors’ association. I was stunned by what the contractor showed me in a small piece of paper. It was the allocation of funds for a project. It was as detailed a list as that shown by Senator Panfilo Lacson in his privilege speech.
My visit to that official was sometime in 2008; a long time ago. But the percentages in that piece of paper is still in the system.
This is really an old practice and a part of the bureaucratic culture of infrastructure agencies. Certainly, the systems that allow these are due for an overhaul. And so are the corrupt.
The lessons in these stories from my father are still applicable today. The actors just got bolder, throwing caution to the winds.
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