Massive corruption in the offing

THE inclination of Dagupan City Mayor Brian Lim to suspend if not reject the Waste to Worth Project can only be motivated by one thing – massive corruption. How can anyone justify spending over P70 million for waste and garbage disposal when the option offered to the city is not to spend a single centavo?

Worse, the option he is contemplating is to spend on is for the transfer merely of the city’s daily tons of garbage to another destination instead of eliminating and converting the wastes to energy through modern technology.

It’s no secret that garbage hauling is one open-ended activity for corruption. It’s an old ploy by corrupt governments that enables mayors and key officials to channel big chunks of public funds to their bank accounts. In Dagupan, that would be P70-M to feast on.  At the minimum rate of 30% in illegal profits, that’d be a hefty P21-M about to be pocketed.

The formula for corruption in garbage hauling is simple. Contractor and city government merely agree on number of ghost hauling and deliveries because they believe nobody but nobody can keep count of the daily hauling and deliveries. But that’s where he’s wrong. Technology now has a way of tracking promised deliveries and commitments between contractors and corrupt officials.

The plan alone to trash the W2W project in favor of garbage hauling is already a telltale sign of a plan to commit massive graft and corruption.

Vietnam’s early hit

IT’S still more than two years before the next SEA Games is held but already, Vietnam is flexing its muscles this early.  A badly-beaten runner-up behind the Philippines, Vietnam has started chopping events that we dominated in the just-ended Games. As host of the next biennial meet, Vietnam has the exclusive right to calendar the sports to be played in the 2021 SEA Games.  The sporting world has been consistently critical of this rule but the 11-nation conclave has been stubbornly persistent in upholding tradition.  That Games provision has been in effect since 1959, the year it was founded. In 2005, when we won the overall crown, Thailand, the host in 2007, removed events where we struck gold, leading to a sorry sixth-place finish for the Philippines. 

Vietnam has expelled arnis, where we won 14 of the 20 golds staked this year.  That’s just the beginning.

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