The state as deadbeat

For a few hours on the last day of May, one man shut down a PHP 2.261-billion road. Roel Amara barricaded both lanes of the Iloilo Sunset Boulevard in Barangay Cagbang, Oton, over a PHP 28-million right-of-way claim the Department of Public Works and Highways has yet to settle. The boulevard opened to the public in January 2025. The government has been collecting the benefits of his land since. He has been collecting promises.

Secretary Vince Dizon came to Iloilo last week with an explanation that is partly true: Congress did this. The numbers back him up. The department asked for PHP 36.91 billion in ROW funds for 2025 and got PHP 2 billion. It asked for PHP 36.14 billion for 2026 and got PHP 5 billion. Set that against the debt itself – DPWH officials told the House in 2024 that outstanding ROW obligations had reached about PHP 60 billion as of 2022, a portion of them final court judgments already accruing legal interest – and you see the problem. You cannot pay a sixty-billion-peso debt with pocket change.

But Dizon’s framing is also convenient. Congress took a chainsaw to the DPWH budget – the agency ended up with PHP 529.6 billion for 2026, roughly 40 percent of its original PHP 881.3-billion proposal, after new flood control funding was stripped out entirely – because the department’s own credibility had collapsed under the flood control scandal. ROW payments, arguably the most legitimate line item in those books, got swept out with the least legitimate ones. That is on Congress. The scandal that made the purge necessary is on DPWH.

Here is the part that should embarrass everyone. Republic Act 10752 – and the 2026 budget law itself – requires the DPWH to resolve all right-of-way issues before initiating any project. Sunset Boulevard carried traffic for over a year on land the state never paid for. Build first, pay later, sometimes never. Then, when the landowner finally loses patience, tell him his barricade is illegal. Dizon is right on the narrow point – we cannot have every unpaid claimant blockading a national road, and that precedent should worry us. But a government squatting on private property is in no position to lecture anyone about legality.

So, three things. First, Dizon promised to settle the Oton claim within June. That is a dated commitment; we intend to check on July 1. Second, DPWH should publish a regional inventory of ROW arrears – who is owed, how much, since when. Lawmakers themselves have called the situation an injustice to property owners; sunlight is cheap. Third, Congress must fund the 2027 ROW request at the level actually proposed. Paying court-ordered debts is not pork. With interest running on these obligations, delay is the expensive option, not the frugal one.

Mr. Amara’s barricade came down. The question it raised has not: if the state will not honor its own debts, why should anyone honor its rules?