CCC data: DPWH's 2025 expenses for flood control projects at P360B

The Department of Public Works and Highways' expenses for flood control projects in 2025 is worth P360 billion, the Climate Change Commission said Friday.

CCC made the disclosure through its budget sponsor, ACT-CIS party-list Rep. Edvic Yap, during the House plenary deliberations on CCC’s proposed P183 million budget for 2026.

During the questioning of Kabataan Rep. Renee Co, Yap replied that based on CCC’s implementation of the Climate Change Expenditure Tagging Program, DPWH’s climate change expenses reached P754 billion, of which 360 billion were for flood control projects.

“The CCC does not do the planning, only the tagging [of climate change expenditures]. From their tagging, P360 billion was for flood control,” Yap said.

Co then questioned the huge DPWH expenditure for flood control projects, given the frequent flooding and the raging controversy over public officials and contractors allegedly securing kickback off flood control projects.

“We ask these questions, Mr. Speaker, because we'd like to know why the environmental budget, or at least how it is tagged and how the Climate Change Commission tracks it, remains less than 0.5% of the national pie. When climate emergencies and ecological collapse mostly impact rural and poor communities, the indigenous peoples and fisher folk, we want to know why frontline communities are left to their own devices when disaster strikes while funds mostly go to consultancy and monitoring contracts or infrastructure projects that turn out to be ghost or substandard,” Co said.

“We are concerned if agencies are implementing measures to ensure that climate change problems are addressed in accordance with the CCC’s Climate Change Action Plan,” she added.

Yap responded by saying that the CCC ensures the compliance of agencies working together with the Commission on Audit and the Department of Budget and Management, on top of giving recommendations on how to further improve compliance with the action plan in place.

Co, however, said such efforts are not enough as seen with multiple reports of ghost, if not substandard flood control projects amid government crackdown.

“As it stands, it looks like po that what happens is there are consultative conferences, there are monitoring conferences, but it is unclear how CCC is really able to ensure compliance. Case in point is the P360 billion expenses for flood control and we now see that most of these flood control projects are actually ghost, substandard. There a corruption crisis and a worsening climate change crisis at the same time,” Co said.

“There were no adaptation, mitigation measures, they were not implemented to serve the most vulnerable communities that are affected by climate change,” she added.—AOL, GMA Integrated News