MANILA, Philippines — Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson challenged Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon’s statements denying the existence of ghost projects in Taguig City, stating that the agency head’s claims conflict directly with internal field inspection findings.
The dispute arose after Dizon testified during a Senate finance subcommittee hearing on the proposed 2027 Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) budget. When questioned by Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano regarding ghost projects in Taguig, Dizon claimed there were “none.”
Lacson countered the assertion, citing evaluation reports generated by engineers from DPWH’s own Bureau of Quality and Safety, Bureau of Maintenance, Bureau of Construction, and Bureau of Research and Standards.
According to the lawmaker, these documents detail various completed flood control initiatives in the city that could not be physically validated during actual field checks.
“Poor DPWH Site Inspection Engineers. Their boss, Sec Vince Dizon directly contradicted their own site inspection reports in Taguig, specifically submitted by personnel from the department’s Bureau of Quality and Safety and Bureau of Maintenance,” Lacson stated in a social media post.
Lacson further revealed that a separate DPWH analysis using artificial intelligence image-similarity technology evaluated 15,523 billing photos from Taguig projects between 2017 and 2025.
The digital review identified 1,079 paired images across 180 unique contracts that displayed high visual similarities.
Among the contractors tied to multiple projects sharing similar billing images were Dahl Construction Corp. (16 projects), L.R. Tiqui Builders Inc. (12), 729 Construction Inc. (10), RVR3 Construction Supply and Services (10), Toughbuilt Construction & Trading Inc. (9), J. Simeon Construction (8), Tuchar Construction Corporation (7), Bell Construction (6), M3 Konstract Corporation (5), and Zyre Trading and Construction (5).
The senator added that his office has already received formal agency records documenting slope protection projects in Taguig that were reported as finished despite being nonexistent.
”Poor Vince Dizon. The ‘pressure’ of work may have clouded his memory. The DPWH already turned over to my Senate office records of nonexistent but reported as completed slope protection projects in Taguig. Like toothpaste squeezed from the tube, there’s no putting it back,” Lacson remarked in a follow-up statement.
Lacson’s team has submitted at least 45 case studies detailing alleged systemic irregularities in Taguig flood control and infrastructure projects to the Office of the Ombudsman, which has since initiated a fact-finding investigation into the matter, alongside additional submissions on alleged illegal reclamation activities along Laguna Lake.