Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. on Sunday accused Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno of conniving with Public Works officials in facilitating anomalous allocations in flood control projects.

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The House Committee on Rules headed by Andaya on Sunday said it will subpoena in its next hearing some senior officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) who could shed light on the alleged conspiracy with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and Aremar Construction Corp., the firm of Diokno’s in-laws.

Subpoenas will be sent to senior DPWH officials including Ma. Catalina Cabral, undersecretary for planning and private-public partnership;
Rafael “Pye” Yabut, senior undersecretary for regional operations in Luzon; and Patrick Gatan, project director of Flood Control Management Cluster.

The House committee will also issue subpoena duces tecum for DPWH official documents and transaction records related to flood control projects implemented from 2017 to 2018.

“The testimonies from the DPWH regional office and district offices in Bicol were very clear. Top DPWH officials are ignoring Department Order 23 to bypass strict requirements for flood control projects,” Andaya said.

“Whoever is downloading these instructions to the DPWH district engineers is possibly the one in cahoots with Secretary Diokno. These flood control projects submitted by the district engineers are then used to come up with a list of projects for approval by Secretary Diokno,” he added.

Andaya, who led the committee hearing with DPWH and DBM Region 5 officials on January 3 in Naga City, Camarines Sur, said they would soon identify the DPWH officials behind the flood control scam, which could have benefitted the Aremar firm through billions of projects devoted to Casiguran and other parts of Sorsogon province.

The Hamors, who own Aremar, are in-laws of Diokno.

The House has invited company president Maria Minez Hamor, stockholder Casiguran Mayor Edwin Hamor, Sorsogon Vice Gov. Esther Hamor, incorporator Romeo “Jojo” Sicat Jr. and his wife, Charlotte Justine Sicat, also the daughter of Diokno.

Meanwhile, Andaya said DPWH Secretary Mark Villar could have been “blind-sided” in the matter.

“I doubt if Secretary Villar is in the loop with this modus operandi. Posibleng blind-sided siya ng mga DPWH officials na involved sa flood-control scam. [It is possible that he was blind-sided by some DPWH officials involved in the flood-control scam]. We hope he can help us get to the bottom of this],” Andaya added.

One of the issues uncovered during the previous hearing was the lack of master plan for flood control projects in Sorsogon.

The House panel had also questioned the use of at least eight “dummy accounts” allegedly used by Aremar to benefit from winning bidders with over P50 million worth of shares.

“It clearly showed in the hearing [that] there is no master plan for flood control projects in Sorsogon. Who, then, included the flood control projects in the DPWH budget that went to in-laws of Secretary Diokno? We will find that out in the next hearing,” Andaya said.

During last December’s “question hour,” Diokno revealed that that the controversial P51.7 billion initially allocated for projects of the DPWH actually amounted to P75 billion, which was part of the “President’s budget.”

The House leadership previously said some P10-billion worth of funds under the DPWH was allocated to Sorsogon for 2019 alone.
The province also received P6 billion for infrastructure projects under the proposed national budget.

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‘Illusory accusations’

Diokno has refuted Andaya’s allegations.

“His accusations are illusory. The numbers [are] wrong and the narrative he’s selling is not grounded on facts… it was the DPWH [that] filled out their budgetary allocation with the specific project listing. The mandate of the DBM is limited to setting the budget ceiling and evaluating agency proposals by program, not by project, because that is the role of the implementing agency,” he said.

“The DBM is [also] not involved in the implementation of projects and awarding of contracts. Contracts are awarded to contractors after open and competitive bidding in accordance with Republic Act 9184 or the ‘Government Procurement Reform Act,’” Diokno added.

Aremar claimed that Andaya was “employing scare tactics” for dragging the Hamors into the picture, just because of their accidental relation by affinity to Diokno.

“It seems that the good congressman is trying to employ scare tactics on my client who has not committed anything wrong except that he has an accidental relation by affinity to his real target — Secretray Ben Diokno,” the Hamor camp said in a statement.

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