MANILA, Philippines — Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Sunday challenged Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon’s statement that no ghost infrastructure projects exist in Taguig City, citing official records that place a local project’s geotagged photos hundreds of kilometers away in Leyte.
Addressing the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) chief on social media, Lacson pointed to an agency report on a Taguig project under Contract ID 220B0106.
The document revealed that metadata attached to its billing photos pointed to Tacloban City, Leyte—roughly 600 kilometers from its intended location in Metro Manila.
“Sec. Vince Dizon, please explain how this finding of your own team should not be flagged as a ghost project in Taguig. Since when has Taguig been located in Leyte?” Lacson said.
The senator noted that the project was contracted to St. Timothy Construction, a firm owned by controversial figures Sarah and Curlee Discaya, who have been tied to irregular flood control projects.
“To further highlight the red flag, Discaya’s St Timothy ang contractor. What do you say about this, Sec?” he pointed out.
According to financial billing documents cited by Lacson, a 15% advance payment of ₱13,738,755.81 was released on June 23, 2022, accompanied by geotagged images anchored to Tacloban City.
Subsequent billings—a ₱37.162-million first billing on July 27, 2022, a ₱19.174-million second billing on September 12, 2022, a ₱21.202-million third billing on September 22, 2022, and a final ₱18.96-million billing on February 22, 2023—either lacked attached images entirely or contained photographs stripped of coordinate metadata.
The discrepancy directly contradicts statements made by Dizon during a recent Senate subcommittee hearing on the DPWH budget, where he denied the existence of ghost projects in Taguig following questions from Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano.
Taguig serves as Cayetano’s political stronghold.
Cayetano has consistently denied the allegations, framing Lacson’s claims as politically motivated attacks.
However, Lacson emphasized that DPWH’s own site inspection reports confirmed that coordinates in the progress and final billings did not match the actual physical site.
He suggested that Dizon may be under intense pressure, noting that the DPWH had previously transmitted records to his office detailing projects reported as completed despite being non-existent.
Furthermore, an internal DPWH analysis using an AI-based image similarity detection tool scanned 15,523 project photos in Taguig from 2017 to 2025, flagging 1,079 pairs of images for high visual similarity.
Lacson and his team have already submitted 45 case studies detailing systemic anomalies in Taguig’s flood control projects to the Office of the Ombudsman, which confirmed that a fact-finding investigation is currently underway.