Road Board extorting from congressmen – Alvarez

MANILA, Philippines -  An agency shaking down congressmen?

Road Board officials have been receiving 20 percent commission on infrastructure projects earmarked by members of the House of Representatives, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez claimed yesterday.

Alvarez made the revelation in an interview over radio station dzMM, saying he had received complaints from his House colleagues.

“At first I did not believe it, until my staff was asked to give them 20 percent commission on a project. If you refuse, their option is to get another contractor,” he said.

Alvarez has filed a bill seeking the abolition of the Road Board after it misappropriated P90.7 billion in Road User’s Tax, according to findings of the Commission on Audit (COA).

He said the Road Board’s functions should be transferred to the Departments of Public Works and Highways and Transportation.

“The Road Board is just a layer of bureaucracy, which became another avenue for graft and corruption,” he said.

Alvarez believes Congress will look into the anomalies of the Road Board as Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III filed a counterpart measure in the upper chamber.

The Speaker noted a pattern of anomalies over the years, when COA discovered the illegal utilization of the Road Fund, estimated to have amounted to a total of P90.72 billion from 2001 to December 2012.

The Road Board was created under Republic Act 8794, which imposed a motor vehicle users’ charge on owners of motor vehicles.

Based on the COA report, Alvarez said some P515.5 million of the Road Fund was used from 2004 to 2008 for payment of salaries, allowances, maintenance and other operating expenses, which should have been sourced from its regular budget.

In 2011, P62.5 million of the Road Fund was used for the Road Board’s engineering and administrative overhead expenses, according to COA.

In 2013, state auditors uncovered findings of irregularities in the use of more than P1.6 billion of the Road Fund.

 From 2001 to 2010, the COA noted discrepancies amounting to P1.495 billion in the total collection of Road User’s Tax declared by the Land Transportation Office and the certification from the Bureau of Treasury.