Senator Panfilo Lacson on Sunday publicly challenged Public Works and Highways Secretary Vince Dizon to clarify findings in the department’s own records regarding a Taguig City infrastructure initiative that contained geotagged billing photographs pointing to Leyte province, contradicting claims that no ghost projects exist in the city.
Writing on his X account, Lacson highlighted internal findings involving a Taguig City project under Contract ID 220B0106, where geotagged documentation attached to billing applications mapped to coordinates roughly 600 kilometers away in Leyte.
“Sec. Dizon, please explain how this finding of your own team should not be flagged as a ghost project in Taguig. (Since when has Taguig been located in Leyte?)” Lacson said.
Citing the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) internal document, Lacson quoted: “Geotagged Photographs contained coordinates pointing outside verified project limits (e.g. metadata of Contract ID 220B0106 reflected coordinates located approximately 600 kilometers away in LEYTE PROVINCE)”.
The lawmaker underscored that the contract was awarded to St. Timothy Construction, an enterprise owned by the Discaya family, who have previously been connected to controversial flood mitigation contracts.
“To further highlight the red flag, Discaya’s St. Timothy ang contractor (was the contractor). What do you say about this, Sec?)” he added.
Detailing the project’s financial timeline, Lacson revealed that a 15 percent mobilization advance amounting to P13,738,755.81 was released on June 23, 2022, accompanied by billing photographs bearing geotagged coordinates in Tacloban City, Leyte.
Subsequent disbursements followed an irregular pattern. The first partial billing on July 27, 2022, amounting to P37.162 million, was processed without attached image documentation. The second partial billing of P19.174 million on September 12, 2022, was submitted with attached photographs lacking metadata coordinates. A third partial billing of P21.202 million on September 22, 2022, was processed with photo attachments stripped of location coordinates, while the fourth and final billing of P18.960 million on February 22, 2023, was approved with attached images again lacking geotag metadata.
Lacson pointed out that DPWH inspection officers explicitly logged that coordinates embedded in progress and final billing submissions “do not correspond with the actual project site verified during the inspection”.
The disclosures follow Dizon’s testimony during a Senate budget subcommittee hearing on Friday, where, under questioning by Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, the DPWH chief stated that ongoing agency inquiries had uncovered no ghost projects in Taguig City.
Lacson countered Dizon’s statements on Saturday, suggesting the Secretary’s memory may have been clouded by administrative pressure, noting that DPWH personnel had already transmitted records to his Senate office detailing completed but physically nonexistent slope protection works.
He further referenced DPWH analytical data from an “Analysis of Potential Similar Billing Photographs from 2017-2025 of Taguig projects using AI-Based Image Similarity Detection Approach,” which screened 15,523 project photos and flagged 1,079 image pairs for high visual duplication.
Lacson and his investigative team have submitted at least 45 detailed case studies on flood control irregularities in Taguig City to the Office of the Ombudsman, which has initiated a fact-finding probe into the matter.