‘Bonoan promised to the senators that under his watch, the department will have “a stricter process for planning.”’
DURING the last budget hearing in the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Francis Tolentino hit the nail right in the head when — citing incontrovertible data — he was able to force Manuel Bonoan, incoming secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), to admit that the department’s biggest problem is lack of planning.
The onus is on the former secretaries, now Senator Mark Villar and former congressman Roger Mercado, to explain the serious problems and discrepancies Senator Tolentino is seeing in the DPWH budgets and project performance since 2021. The greater responsibility for making right the department’s budget, operations, planning and direction lies on the shoulders of Secretary Bonoan.
Last Thursday, Oct. 13, Tolentino grilled the secretary over projects that were either delayed or not implemented as well as unobligated and undisbursed funds. Citing a Commission on Audit report, Tolentino said the DPWH was unable to establish the technical viability of projects, resulting in delayed completion and non-implementation of 3,440 infrastructure projects worth around P255 billion. He said there were also 437 projects amounting to P10.9 billion that were not started at all, as well as 12 foreign-assisted projects that were restructured.
Secretary Bonoan explained to Tolentino and the senators that there were “intervening reasons” behind the delay of the projects. “There have been projects included in the 2021 budget that needed to be – we call for later release and this has to be approved by the Office of the President. It took some time for these projects to be processed and approved,” Bonoan said. He noted that there were also “operational bottlenecks” for the final execution of the projects. Tolentino said operational bottlenecks mentioned may be “sourced” from the internal failure to establish the technical viability of the projects, adding that “these projects were actually incorporated in the budget without a preliminary assessment from the start.”
The senator said that P1.4 billion remained unobligated and undisbursed under the department’s 2021 budget. The DPWH said that it obligated P5.4 billion out of the P5.5 billion quick response fund in 2021. It said it has also disbursed P4.2 billion as of August 2022, leaving only P1.3 billion. The department said it is working on disbursing the remaining funds before the end of the year.
Bonoan had to admit to Senator Tolentino’s claim that the DPWH “does not have a good planning office” thus the repeated occurrences of these gaps. Bonoan promised to the senators that under his watch, the department will have “a stricter process for planning.”
We doubt if this can be achieved with the way Secretaries Babes Singson, Mark Villar, Roger Mercado and now, Manny Bonoan have always maintained Undersecretary Catalina “Cathy” Cabral to handle the Planning Services and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) of the department. If the planning service is the department’s big headache, then reforms should be made among its leadership and personnel.
It is good that Secretary Bonoan has assured Tolentino that he will make things right in the DPWH, considering that Bonoan has to guard the department’s 2023 budget of P718 billion and ensure that it is disbursed judiciously and for the right projects for the benefit of the Filipino people.
