February 3, 2009 · Posted in: Congress Watch, Governance, i Report Features, In the News
Contractors in Congress
AS a sidebar to our story on the conflicting findings by the World Bank Sanctions Board and the Department of Public Works and Highways into the alleged collusion and overpricing among contractors in the National Road Improvement and Management Project (NRIMP), PCIJ Writer-Researcher Karol Ann Ilagan inquired into the members of the House of Representatives’s committee on public works and highways who are themselves contractors, or have interests or assets in the construction industry.
Last week, the committee on public works and highways — the second largest in the House with 95 members — conducted two days of hearing on the issue. For some unexplained reasons, senior members of the committee promptly declared that it is the World Bank, and not the contractors, who should be sanctioned, and that no collusion had occurred at all.
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CONGRESSMEN WITH BUSINESS INTERESTS AND/OR ASSETS IN CONSTRUCTION (9th, 11th–14th Congress)
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CONGRESS
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NO. OF REPRESENTATIVES
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% OF TOTAL MEMBERS
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9th
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21
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11
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11th
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29
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13
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12th
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18
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8
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13th
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15
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7
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14th
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12
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5
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Source: The Rulemakers (2007), www.i-site.ph
Note: The SALNs of 14th Congress representatives Carol Jayne Lopez, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Benhur Salimbangon, Cecilia Seares-Luna, and Liwayway Vinzons-Chato are not in file of the PCIJ Library.
For her story, Ilagan mined the PCIJ’s database on the Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) of the members of Congress, from 1992, that is uploaded on our website, i-site.ph.
Read on at pcij.org.
1 Response to Contractors in Congress
Huseng Bulag
February 11th, 2009 at 11:12 am
“For some unexplained reasons, senior members of the committee promptly declared that it is the World Bank, and not the contractors, who should be sanctioned, and that no collusion had occurred at all”
Height of callousness, shoot the messenger