WE warned him several times to change the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) District Engineer Abraham Villareal here in Bacolod City, but he wouldn’t listen. Is there such a thing in the DPWH as “shuffling the regional directors” to avoid more corruption? I believe this is Villareal’s eighth year? Strong connections? Now it can be told.

The DPWH is losing billions of government funds for flood control after a strong low depression rain flooded the whole of Bacolod just the other day. Cars were floating everywhere and pedestrians had to walk home, some barefoot, in flooded waters, with transport stranded for hours long into the night. Three people, including a young boy, were lost in the flood. And this was not the first time. Calling Public Works Secretary Mark Villar. What are you waiting for? For more people to die?

After all these years, please come and visit us, and see all of your friends and classmates here to tell you the truth if you don’t believe me. Don’t let the local city officials know because if you do, they will tell you a different story and ask for more funds again. I heard they already did? Ha ha. Now they will request for more to repair what they destroyed in the first place. Palpak. Your DPWH contractors here bore the drainage in the middle of all roads and highways, obstructing traffic for years, instead of the side lanes where they should have placed the flood control culverts, but now it is worse than before; and pictures don’t lie.





Secretary Mark, you have been and are wasting billions of congressional funds, given all these four years and the people of Bacolod, rich and poor, are up in arms now. Build, Build, Build here is cursed by our residents. Big farce. Big joke. You may succeed with some projects in Metro Manila, but it is not the Philippines. Take a look at Iloilo, too. Same story. As your former colleague in Congress for several years, you know this as well as I do and you must do something about this or you’ll end up being regarded in the provinces as one of the worst DPWH secretaries in history.

Problem is, some of you people up there don’t listen anymore. Paging my friend DPWH Undersecretary Manny Bonoan, too. Eight years in Bacolod for Engineer Villareal is just too long. Malakas ba? Akala ko nawala na daw ‘yan?

We’ve been together in Congress, Mister Secretary, for several years and, knowing you, we expected more than just the skyways in Manila. I’m sorry I’m forced to come out in the open now knowing how much respect I have for your parents. But enough is enough. After these floods every year, our real estate investors will probably shape up and move elsewhere, not even to Camella.

Bacolod is drowning. Please help us. You’re wasting a lot of people’s money.