PUBLIC Works and Highways Sec. Hermogenes Ebdane surreptitiously came to town recently to issue a statement of admiration for the performance of Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Southern Mindanao. The cabinet secretary thinks that his statement is like a hungry detergent that can wash away the soot in the department that has grown so thick during his incumbency. Corruption and irregularity has not ebb, and one gets the feeling that graft is rewarded instead of being punished.

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I will give Regional Director Osop Ali his redemption from the corruptive influences that have become so pervasive in DPWH under the watch of Secretary Ebdane if he can convince us the rationality of spending P47 million on chevrons that cost P13,860 each! The road signs are clustered so close in a less-than-two-kilometer stretch that is mostly straight than curve. And Ebdane has the audacity to put up those huge billboards with his and Pres. Arroyo's faces conspicuously printed. I don't think PGMA is aware of this. What's amusing is that even the "initiative" billboards of Speaker Nograles and son Karlo are appended on those big DPWH signboards.

Chevrons are road safety signs, but when you set them up in a straight highway, you are abetting road accidents. The chevrons in Carlos P. Garcia Highway, which is popularly known as "diversion" road, are more hazardous than safe. What is more scandalous here, and Secretary Ebdane seem to have a distorted sense of value on this aspect, are the hundreds of chevrons where 15 or 20 units could have sufficed and hundreds more where there ought to be none.

And he sings praises instead of being red in the face. I think that DPWH, the Commission on Audit, and the office of the Ombudsman have lost the basic sense of value or the standard of what is right or wrong that no magnitude of scandal can move them to react. It behooves me to ponder how possibly can we get rid of corruption that bedevils this government when the very watchdogs sleep idly in ennui not being able to distinguish the putrid mesh of graft from the sweet smell of decency and honesty.

The chevrons cost P13,865.00 each. It is purportedly made of aluminum and coated with rubberized reflectorized paint. I had it from good sources that ABS-CBN Davao had the costing evaluated by a technical firm. Based on specs, they said, each unit will only cost a little over P4,000. But what is disturbing is that instead of the aluminized materials, what was used was galvanized iron. Will COA please check on this?

I have not seen any publication for invitation for bid for the fabrication and supply of chevrons. I would surmise that this may have been transacted in the head office. If this is so, I will not fault Regional Director Ali on this but he should be put to task by looking into the irregularities of this deal. He should tell us whether this was subject to bidding, where was it published, who were invited to bid, and who won the bidding. The DPWH City District officials have been so quiet all along despite the fact that this project has earned not praises but public condemnation following the discovery that the cost is just plainly outrageous and unconscionable.

Now a few will begrudge me in my view that Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has provided a number of significant infrastructures to Mindanao compared to Cory, FVR (Fidel Valdez Ramos), and Erap (Joseph Estrada) combined. In all these projects, billions of pesos were spent. But billions too have gone to the wrong pockets. The culprits are still very much around and oftentimes are awarded plum assignments on top of the reward they get from contractors. Remember the gold-plated street lamps in Mandaue City in Cebu which cost taxpayers billions of pesos? Was this not during the watch of Ebdane too? Where are those involved in this scam now? Not too long ago, DPWH reconstructed the collapsed Bankerohan Bridge in Davao City. After a very long delay, which lasted for 11 months, DPWH awarded the project by "negotiation" to a Manila-based contractor under mysterious circumstances and claiming it was emergency in nature. A P206-million project being negotiated is criminal.

The decibels of public uproar on scams like these are too loud for government watchdogs like COA and the Ombudsman not to hear. In some of these, the name as well as the picture of PGMA had been dragged and used. In the case of the Bankerohan Bridge, the President was so outraged that when it was supposed to be inaugurated by her, she refused to be involved in the ceremony. I hope that she translates this fury into action by letting the axe fall where it should be.

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By the way, I received an e-mail from Sec. Jess Dureza, frantically asking for financial help to bail him out from his hotel in London after he lost his travel documents along with his money. I knew immediately that it was a scam and Jess's e-mail was hacked, because Jess knew I do not have the moola to extricate him from his predicament. I called up Jess and found out that he is in Davao City taking care of his wife Beth. So you see, scams are not exclusive only in the Philippines. It takes all kinds.