Daily Blog 03 - Corruption in Construction

 > ! It turns out that this post has become a bit political. The construction industry has been linked to corruption, most especially in my country. In fact, one government agency is now under investigation due to its corruption issues that is happening recently. It’s been years, and people are still blinded by their “cults” and “idols” that have power in the government. But we will not discuss it here. I want to talk about the corruption in construction in general. I am a site engineer for a small contractor in our province. I am the one in charge of the project, creating reports, supervising the workers, and checking if the design has been followed. I also manage the procurement, ordering materials from our HR, and talk and receive from the supplier. I recently experienced ordering sand and gravel from the supplier. We ordered 28 cu.m each. Surprisingly, there were only two trucks that arrived. One is for sand and the other is for the gravel. I checked the dimensions of the truck, making sure that we will receive the correct volume that we ordered. Unfortunately, there were only 16 cu.m and 14 cu.m, respectively. Imagine the smaller amount of what they brought to us. The supplier then whispered to me, “I will give you Php 3,000.00,” which I immediately refused. From what I understand, they won’t bring the additional from what we ordered but I should report that we received the exact amount. So, we will receive the full price of our order but receive lesser amount of the material. From that, I realized how the corruption is actually happening from this industry. And how this system works for a long time. What’s more surprising is that the workers that I am supervising feels like they know the system, when the truck was arriving, most of them shouted “oh miryenda yan ha”. They were even waiting for me to get back to the site, may be checking if I received a money. It is sad, we are just a small contractor and it is happening here, even thousands, if accumulated is huge. Imagine how much money the government gets from its people. It is obviously millions, or billions. Yet, people are blinded from what they “idols” are saying. I don’t think we can be free from this kind of system if we, who are just also a victim of poor governance and corruption thinks that we are lucky enough to receive a 1 kilo of rice and two cans of sardines, which possibly just a small portion of what they stealth from us. Every cent counts, I hope people won’t be contented with those fake acts and learn what our rights are, and what we should get if we have good governance.