Various organizations led by the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) held a Halloween-themed protest in Mendiola to condemn the monstrous corruption haunting the Filipino people. Protesters came as “ghostbusters,” calling out the “ghost projects”: publicly funded but invisible infrastructures, overpriced and declared “completed”.
Particularly for farmers, the agriculture sector is ghosted by billions of pesos supposedly allocated for immensely overpriced farm-to-market roads (FMRs). Investigations have revealed “ghost” FMR projects that exist only on paper, with millions spent for roads that lead nowhere. Overpriced FMR contracts worth P10.3 billion were also exposed, involving more than 1,600 projects with mark-ups reaching up to 23 times their actual cost. KMP has long asserted that these massive sums of money should have been funneled to rehabilitating local agriculture amid the government scrambling to enact impotent executive orders and other policies to “save” the agricultural crisis.
What should have been a lifeline for farmers has become a “farm-to-pocket” road for politicians, contractors, and corrupt officials. While rural communities remain trapped in poverty, the Department of Agriculture faces a P300 billion backlog in FMR development.
updates from the peasant movement of the Philippines 