A LEADER of the House of Representatives on Sunday disclosed that a former Cabinet official now seeking an elective seat was responsible for “parking” at least P300 million in infrastructure projects in the proposed 2019 national budget.
In a statement, Majority Leader Rolando G. Andaya Jr. said a mayor from Bicol, who requested not to be named in the meantime, bared that the Cabinet member parked the allocation in flood-mitigation projects for the region.
Since the word war began over the budget between the Legislative and Executive, and between certain Senate and House officials, there have been allegations that a new scheme called “parking of budget” with certain agencies—whose leaders may or may not know about it—has been resorted to by some lawmakers to earn commissions from the annual appropriations.
“According to the mayor, more local government executives want to seek an audience with me to shed light on the so-called parking scam in the budget allocations in the region,” Andaya said.
According to Andaya, the House will include these allegations in its investigation.
The House Rules committee will commence its investigation on budget anomalies and questionable allocations by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) at 10 a.m. on January 3 in Naga City.
“The parking scheme, facilitated by the DBM, may eventually explain the huge spike allocated to flood- mitigation projects from 2017 to 2018. From P79 billion in 2017, the budget for flood-mitigation projects ballooned to a whopping P133 billion,” he added.
According to the lawmaker, at least P2.2 billion was added to the national flood-control project in Bicol from 2017 to 2018.
The committee will also subpoena, among others, the regional director of theDepartment of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), two district engineers of Sorsogon City and the district engineer of Catanduanes.
Andaya said subpoenas will be sent as well to are heads of the DPWH bids and awards committee, active and recently retired, who handled the flooding projects of the controversial CT Leoncio Construction and Trading.
Payables
Andaya said the committee, at a later date, also intends to summon Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno to shed light on pending queries related to the 2018 national budget and proposed 2019 GAA, including billions of payables.
“Also, I am particularly interested in knowing the total amount of payables that the DBM owes to contractors and suppliers this year. During the Question Hour, he disclosed that these payables run to billions of pesos,” he said.
The DPWH undersecretary for planning, Ma. Catalina Cabral, has confirmed to Congress that for the DPWH alone, the payables have reached P44 billion, he said.
“The billion-dollar question: why then did Secretary Diokno insist on inserting an additional P75 billion in the DPWH infrastructure projects for 2019 when the DBM has no money to pay for a P100-billion debt to contractors and suppliers?” Andaya asked.