Tales of corruption surrounding flood control projects continue to unravel. There’s the district engineer (DE) who allegedly offered Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste P3 million in cash last week as his share for a project in Leviste’s district.
Following my series of columns on the corrupt practices of these unscrupulous DEs and other Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials, some readers, apart from my regular sources, shared more horror stories. Some weren’t necessarily about corruption but about impropriety and violations of rules governing civil servants.
Complaint against a municipal engineer
One citizen complainant, Cristina Antonio, for instance, shared with me the filings she made against the municipal engineer of San Juan, La Union who was allegedly seen gambling while the province was devastated by a typhoon.
The engineer, Prudel Quinsaat, was found gambling at Thunderbird Casino in La Union on July 26, 2025, just a day after Typhoon Emong devastated several barangays, Antonio said in an Aug. 4 letter to the Civil Service Commission’s Contact Center ng Bayan.
Antonio’s father personally saw Engr. Quinsaat gambling at the Thunderbird’s Pai Gow table between 4 and 5 p.m., a time when La Union was under a declared state of calamity due to the severe impacts of the typhoon.
“Given the magnitude of the typhoon’s impact, including the destruction of roads and infrastructure, this behavior reflects gross insensitivity and dereliction of duty, especially from a key official tasked with overseeing public works and infrastructure recovery.
“We understand that casino policies prohibit patrons from recording or taking videos inside the gaming area. However, we are also aware that closed-circuit television footage is maintained and can be subpoenaed. We respectfully request that your office initiate the process to secure a copy of the CCTV footage from the Pai Gow table during the stated time on July 26, 2025, to verify Engr. Quinsaat’s presence and actions.
“This complaint is made in good faith and in the public’s interest. It is deeply disheartening to see a government official prioritize personal recreation while communities are suffering and in urgent need of leadership and service. We trust that the DILG will uphold its mandate to ensure accountability among public servants, especially in times of crisis,” Antonio said.
For his part, Quinsaat, in a letter to La Union Mayor Mariquita Padua Ortega explaining the complaint against him, admitted that he was indeed in the casino at the time but claimed it was for “recreation purposes and to meet a prospective seller of generator sets.”
He promised not to do it again.
I hope the CSC and the LGU act on this matter and that the investigation does not end with Quinsaat’s promise not to do it again.
Citizens’ complaints such as the one lodged by Antonio give me hope for our country. Citizens care for good governance.
We can see now on social media that more and more complaints against corrupt practices are coming out. The uproar is real. Filipinos are no longer taking this sitting down. They are giving a damn where their taxes go.
It is possible that corrupt civil servants are using casinos to launder the money they’ve stolen.
The Marcos administration must take these complaints seriously. No complaint is too small or too negligible.
Another horror story involves a ranking DPWH official in Cebu who owns several properties in the posh Maria Luisa Subdivision in the province.
One of the properties serves as this DPWH’s meeting place with contractors, including one who is on the Top 15 list which President Marcos exposed.
This particular contractor, a friend of lawmakers, has unfinished infrastructure projects in Cebu.
Look at regional clusters
One contractor told me that investigators should also look at DEs in the same regional clusters because they are usually in cahoots and have the same modus operandi. They also usually work with the same unscrupulous contractors.
Against this backdrop, the ombudsman, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Anti-Money Laundering Council should start their respective investigations based on Sen. Ping Lacson’s bombshell speech.
Those involved need to face serious charges and be sent to jail for corrupting billions of taxpayers’ money that could have otherwise been used for education, health care and other social services.
And while the DPWH secretary’s move to reorganize some DE offices is commendable, we should also think of more lasting solutions – a whole-of-nation approach and a major overhaul of the system.
One reader, Enrique Clemente, said the DPWH, and not just the DE office, should be abolished altogether and replaced by new departments instead – one for road building and repairs; another for flood control; another for bridge building and repairs and another for school building and repairs.
“Then, eliminate pork barrel, ayuda and confidential funds. Appoint department secretaries without padrinos and kumpares; appoint persons with integrity and who are willing to be accountable for their actions/projects,” he said.
In other words, he said, all one needs to do is to have the cojones to fight corruption.
For sure, the fight against corruption is easier said than done. It will be an uphill battle and in some cases, the anti-corruption crusaders may reach dead ends.
But we must keep going. To oppose corruption in government, as author G. Edward Griffin said, is the highest obligation of patriotism.
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Email: eyesgonzales@gmail.com. Follow her on X @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.