“BUNUTIN ang sheet pile at magkaalaman kung 36 meters nga ba.”
Visibly livid, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon barked during his inspection of the Candating flood control project site in Arayat only last Sept. 24 with Independent Commission on Infrastructure special advisor Benjie Magalong in tow. The Baguio mayor has since resigned from the ICI and the sheet piles remained as buried in the mud, as of Sept. 29.
Dizon deemed the Candating project as substandard, impacting that to the very face of Edgardo Sagum, owner of the project contracting firm Eddmari Construction & Trading, No. 4 in the Top 10 flood control project contractors in Pampanga at P653.780 million.
The flood control project collapsing within a year of completion, not to mention a previous collapse even before a prior completion the year before, has all the red flags of its being substandard, reasoned Dizon. Seeing either faulty planning or flawed implementation as the cause. Of course, there is the possibility of both.
Hence, pulling out the sheet piles will provide the answer. That they have stayed unpulled raises more questions and speculations running the gamut from the righteous to the ridiculous, and yes, malicious.
Especially given how the call to dig out the sheet piles in questionable flood control projects have reverberated across Pampanga at least for the last two years.
“Bagutan la reng sheet piles,” Association of Barangay Captains-Mexico president Terence Napao called out in August 2023, referencing alleged anomalies in the flood control projects contracted to A.D. Gonzales Construction & Trading, bearing the very name of then-House Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio “Dong” Gonzales Jr., representative of the 3rd District of Pampanga.
Napao subsequently haled Gonzales to the Ombudsman on graft and corruption charges which the Ombudsman unceremoniously junked for “lack of evidence,” if memory serves right.
Nature fortuitously provided the evidence veritably vindicating Napao, when, in September 2024, heavy rains washed out a P199.495-million flood control project along the Abacan River in Barangay Suclaban, Mexico, unearthing visibly short-of-specification sheet piles.
The contractor: A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction & Trading. Project duration: June 13, 2022 to June 7, 2023.
The unraveling in Candating came a month earlier, on August 17, 2024 when the flood control project was damaged at the onslaught of Super Typhoon Carina and the southwest monsoon.
“Bunutin ang sheet piles,” cried out former multi-term Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo, in the immediate aftermath, during an interview at the “Gising Pilipinas,” hosted by Alvin Elchico and Doris Bigornia over DMM Teleradyo.
“Look if the sheet piles [that buckled and collapsed] were properly compacted or if they met standards, else these were cut short of specifications [for the contractor] to increase profits,” Pelayo said.
“This was constructed precisely to mitigate flooding, do not reason now that its collapse is due to flooding,” the former president of the Pampanga Mayors League and then-consultant at the Department of Agriculture also noted.
In another social media post, Pelayo alleged the Candating dike constructor, Edmarri Construction & Trading, was also the contractor of some other infra projects in San Simon that were “sira la ngan (all damaged).”
“Sobra no pera (they have amassed much money,)” he said.
In his own turn at Candating, Dizon essentially echoed Pelayo, thus: “Yung dami ng perang binuhos ng gobyerno dito since 2018, tapos Ganyan-ganyan lang…roughly P600 million that is useless now…Pinagkakitaan n’yo lang ito, paulit-ulit.”
In a press conference in September last year, former Arayat Vice Mayor Sixto Mallari Jr. articulated the call of the town’s barangay chairmen to pull out the sheet piles in Candating dike to determine if these were really short of specifications which could have contributed greatly to its collapse.
“Pero paano po makikita kung pinutol? Nakabaon pa po eh. Bunutin muna, di ba? Para makita,” Mallari urged the DPWH. “Pagka binunot po yun, instead na, for example, yung size nga nasa 50 meters, eh kung ang lumabas is 20 meters, talagang pinutol. Di ba?”
Bunutin ang sheet piles. Sounded across two years, amplified with the Public Works Secretary himself making the same call for all to hear. Still unheeded. As of the end of September.
It’s getting harder to disbelieve disbelievers of Dizon calling his outrage performative, to the point of ridiculing him as no more than a Marcosian mongrel with all bark and no bite.
Sad.
