DPWH must name, penalize flyover failures

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

The Department of Public Works and Highways is trying to fix Iloilo’s flyover mess with a familiar script: promise a deadline, talk tough on safety, and sprinkle in a little politics.

It is not enough anymore.

Accountability means names, documents and penalties, not just deadlines. Public safety is not compatible with “gift” politics.

If DPWH can order no-cost repairs, it can also enforce no-defect standards and stop repeat failures before concrete is poured.

Secretary Vince Dizon’s Jan. 19 inspection put the spotlight back on two things Ilonggos have lived with for years: stalled projects that choke traffic and newly opened structures that still make people nervous.

The Aganan Flyover, unfinished for more than five years, is now getting another PHP 229 million and a “before end of 2026” finish line, which sounds less like certainty and more like another try.

The Buhang Flyover, opened in May 2023, is showing visible cracks and falling debris barely two years in, which is the kind of sentence that should stop any agency from congratulating itself.

Dizon called the Aganan situation “nakakainis,” and he is right, because what is annoying for officials is costly for the public.

It is costly in wasted time, higher fuel consumption, accident risk, delivery delays, and the slow normalizing of inconvenience as if congestion were just part of Iloilo’s character.

It is also costly in trust.

When a project is stalled for half a decade due to a flawed foundation design, and another flyover shows signs of substandard work shortly after opening, the issue is not only engineering.

The issue is governance.

DPWH says the Aganan foundation design was based on soil depth assumptions of 20 to 24 meters that later tests found should have been 54 meters, and that kind of discrepancy is not a rounding error.

That kind of discrepancy is a system failure that should trigger an uncomfortable paper trail.

Who signed off on the original geotechnical study? Who reviewed it? Who accepted it?

Who approved the design? Who issued the notice to proceed?

Who certified accomplishments and progress billings?

Who decided the risks were acceptable until they suddenly were not?

DPWH itself is part of the chain of custody here, so “we are investigating” cannot be the end point, because the investigator is also a suspect in the public’s eyes.

That is why accountability must be document-driven.

If DPWH wants Ilonggos to believe this time is different, it should publish the basics that matter, in plain language, not in bureaucratic fog.

Publish the contract documents, the variation orders, the geotechnical reports, the design review notes, the test results that flagged the problem, and the internal memos that explain why it took years to move.

Publish what can be published and justify, clearly and specifically, what must be withheld. This is public money, public risk, and public inconvenience, so the default should be disclosure.

The same transparency should apply to Buhang flyover.

Dizon ordered the contractor, F. Gurrea Construction, Inc., to repair the defects at no cost to the government, and that is the right instinct.

But the public deserves more than a phone call and a promise to fix it after Dinagyang.

DPWH should explain the warranty provisions, the defect liability period, the penalties for noncompliance, and the criteria for determining that the solution is truly long-term.

DPWH should also clarify whether “no cost” includes traffic management, safety containment, monitoring, and any future remedial works if the initial fix fails.

A repair is not accountability if it comes without consequences. A repair is only the minimum owed when a structure shows obvious defects.

Accountability is what prevents the next Buhang.

The most revealing line in the Aganan story is not the new money or the new deadline, but the admission that a second opinion from a foreign consultant is needed before final construction resumes.

That is a tacit confession that the old process was not strong enough.

If DPWH needs an external peer check now, then the editorial demand is simple: make independent peer review standard before building, not an emergency tool after failure.

Major foundations should not be a guessing game, and geotechnical validation should not be treated as a box to tick just to mobilize equipment.

This is where “no-defect standards” stops being a slogan and becomes policy.

DPWH should institutionalize third-party design review for complex structures, publish risk protocols, and require contractors and designers to meet stricter performance benchmarks before they can bid again on similar projects.

If an agency can compel no-cost repairs, it can also deny future contracts to repeat underperformers. If an agency can set deadlines, it can also set enforceable consequences.

DPWH should say, now, what penalties apply if the Aganan timeline slips again, and those penalties should not be borne by the public.

The burden should fall on the parties that failed the public, whether through negligence, poor supervision, flawed design, poor execution, or a combination of all four.

Dizon said someone has to answer for what happened, and that answer must take a form that Ilonggos can recognize as real.

Administrative charges where warranted. Civil recovery where warranted.

Contractor sanctions where warranted. Blacklisting where warranted.

And, if the facts point there, criminal accountability for corruption or gross negligence.

The public has been trained to hear “we will look into it” as a soft landing.

DPWH needs to retrain the public to hear “we will publish what we found, and we will penalize who failed” as a hard guarantee.

There is also a separate accountability issue hiding in plain sight: right-of-way.

DPWH acknowledged that the flyover has already been built while some landowners have not yet been compensated, and it promised a significant right-of-way budget for 2026.

That is not a small administrative hiccup. That is a fairness problem that turns ordinary property owners into unwilling creditors of the state.

It is also a warning sign of how projects get pushed forward even when basic legal and ethical obligations are incomplete.

If DPWH wants to be serious about accountability, it should publish the list of right-of-way claims, the status of each case, and a clear payment schedule, while respecting privacy where necessary.

It should also explain why construction proceeded without complete compensation in the first place.

Public works does not justify private harm. The biggest temptation for any administration is to turn infrastructure into a ribbon-cutting calendar. That is where “gift” politics creeps in.

When a flyover is described as a Christmas gift, it shifts the frame from duty to generosity. It subtly tells citizens to be grateful for something they already paid for.

It also encourages deadline-driven thinking that can invite shortcuts, especially in projects where soil, foundation, and structural behavior do not care about political symbolism.

Public safety is not compatible with that framing. A flyover should be delivered as a safe and durable public service, not packaged as seasonal goodwill.

If the President wants to give Ilonggos a gift, the gift is a DPWH culture that is boringly competent.

The gift is a procurement system that rewards quality, not connections. The gift is a transparent project pipeline that the public can track. The gift is the end of déjà vu.

DPWH should create a public project dashboard for Iloilo’s major bridges and flyovers that lists contractor, designer, cost, change orders, timelines, testing milestones, warranty status, safety findings, and accountability actions.

DPWH should also set a clear safety protocol for keeping structures open when defects are present, including debris containment, partial closures, monitoring schedules, and public advisories that are specific and timely.

DPWH is right that closing Buhang could worsen traffic, but keeping it open without a visible, credible safety strategy is a gamble the public did not consent to.

None of these demands are radical. They are what competent, modern public works agencies do when they take governance as seriously as concrete.

Ilonggos do not need more speeches about how annoying delays are.

They need the names of who failed, the documents that show how it happened, and the penalties that make sure it does not happen again.

They need a DPWH that treats safety as the first line of planning, not the last line of messaging. They need leaders who understand that infrastructure is not a favor.

It is an obligation.