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Neil Jayson Servallos - The Philippine Star
March 2, 2026 | 12:00am
Department of Public Works and Highways.
Businessworld / File
MANILA, Philippines — A sweeping reorganization of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) aimed at curbing corruption and plugging procurement loopholes is being pushed in the Senate following recent Blue Ribbon committee investigations.
Filed on Feb. 11 by Senate President Vicente Sotto III, Senate Bill 1835 seeks to significantly reduce the powers of DPWH district offices, which figured prominently in corruption schemes in several cases probed by the chamber like the Bulacan first district engineering office.
The bill proposes stripping district engineering offices of their authority to identify projects and conduct bidding processes, elevating these crucial functions to the regional offices instead.
Consequently, district offices will be relegated to supervision, monitoring and recommendatory roles to strengthen oversight on the ground.
Sotto said the overhaul is necessary to ensure accountability in one of the government’s most heavily funded agencies.
To enforce transparency, the bill mandates the creation of an Infrastructure Inspectorate Team, under whose authority no disbursements or payments to contractors will be allowed without its clearance.
Furthermore, the bill requires these inspections to be livestreamed on official channels.
The measure also seeks to establish an Infrastructure Maintenance Services Unit, which will be tasked with inspecting, evaluating and monitoring completed projects.It will also be required to maintain a centralized, publicly accessible database so citizens can track the progress and funding of DPWH projects.
At the national level, the DPWH will be reorganized according to key infrastructure project types to decentralize project preparation and implementation.
The bill is expected to undergo committee deliberations in the coming weeks.
DPWH reshuffle
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon has conducted another reshuffle in the DPWH, this time focused on district engineer and assistant district engineer level positions in the department that has been at the center of the ghost flood control scandal since last year.
In a series of special orders issued on Feb. 25, Dizon reassigned or promoted 24 officers to district engineer positions and 18 to assistant DE positions in the Luzon and National Capital Region regional offices of the DPWH. — Rainier Allan Ronda
