The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is tasked with building and maintaining the nation's road's and infrastructure. Each year they are allotted a budget worth hundreds of billions of pesos. Likewise throughout the year they are engaged in various projects all which must be approved and have the appropriate funds transferred to the local agencies in charge of said projects. However it seems for one project in particular they don't have the money to pay their workers.
They are not taking this situation sitting down.
These unpaid and rightly disgruntled workers have barricaded the road causing a major headache for vehicular traffic. But can you really blame them? They have not been paid in who knows how long and now they are engaged in a good old fashioned strike. So what's the deal? Why haven't they been paid?
Well for starters the DPWH is the most corrupt agency in all of the Philippine bureaucracy.
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| https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1798594 |
He said the agency’s corruption often happened during the implementation of road projects. District engineers (DE) reportedly connived with politicians, including the representatives of the Lower House.
That assessment is from March 2019 but we can dig further and see that the DPWH has always been wracked with corruption. From 2007:
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| https://www.philstar.com/cebu-news/2007/01/22/381277/dpwh-adopts-code-sms-stop-graft-corruption |
To curb graft and corruption, the Department of Public Works and Highways reminded all its officials and employees to strictly abide by the recently approved DPWH Code of Conduct for Officials and Employees.
The agency formulated the code in support of the government's thrust to stop the practice of graft and corruption among public agencies. This is the first time that the officials and employees of a government agency themselves made their own code of conduct to follow.
DPWH is known as among the most corrupt agencies of the government. In fact, surveys conducted by the Social Weather Stations, always include DPWH in the top five list. In the 1999 and 2000 survey of the SWS, it was tagged as the most corrupt among government agencies
The DPWH wrote their own code of conduct and their employees have not even abided by it. Aside from simple corruption and graft perhaps the reason these men have not been paid is because of the budget woes that greeted everyone at the beginning of the year. The Congress did not pass a budget for 2019 until April.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1072275/reenacted-budget-woes-dpwh-workers-greet-new-year-jobless |
Records from the Region 8 office of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) showed that 3,786 workers—personnel listed as contractuals or under the job order (JO) category—have been told not to report for duty starting Jan. 1, as the agency could no longer pay their salaries.
Tonette Lim, DPWH regional information officer, said it would be unfair to ask JO workers to report for work without pay while the proposed P3.8-trillion 2019 national budget remained pending in Congress.
The lack of a budget at the beginning of the year is probably not the issue here. If these workers were told not to show up because they could not paid then it stands to reason that the men who are striking would have been told the same thing. Plus the budget has already been passed so the funds should be there. Not to mention construction on this road has been ongoing for months now with no stoppage until this week.
I haven't the answer as to why these men have not been paid. When I took these pictures no one was around to ask. It's funny that the men on this project have not been paid when all around Bacolod there is an ambitious highway project, the Bacolod Economic Highway, being rushed and which has had no stoppage. The pictures above are from a small project in barangay Granada. Hopefully these men will receive their pay soon and construction can continue on as normal.
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