(UPDATE) NEWLY appointed Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon on Monday said he would call for courtesy resignations from top to bottom at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which has been racked by scandal over ghost projects and allegations of bribery and corruption. “The first order I will put out is the courtesy resignations, top to bottom — usecs (undersecretaries), asecs (assistant secretaries), division heads, regional directors, down to district engineers,” Dizon said in Filipino at a press conference in Malacañang on Monday. “The order of the President is to clean house, to cleanse the agency... a clean sweep — that is the order of the President,” he added. The call for resignations will cover more than 400 DPWH personnel, including eight undersecretaries, six assistant secretaries, 17 regional directors and assistant regional directors, 197 district engineers, and more than 200 division chiefs. The courtesy resignations would be followed by an intensive review of all DPWH personnel. “I believe that there are many good and excellent employees within the DPWH. The order of the President is to find them and place them in the sensitive and important positions,” Dizon said. He emphasized the need for accountability in light of recent reports on so-called ghost projects, noting that such anomalies could not occur without the involvement or negligence of people within the department. “There won’t be any of these projects if there is no collusion from inside the DPWH. How could a project be funded if it’s really non-existent? There certainly have to be people from DPWH who were paid off,” he said. Dizon acknowledged that his task would be challenging. “It’s not easy for someone like me who has been working in government for a long time. But we have to do it because we have seen, our President has seen, we have all seen what has happened here in this agency,” he said in Filipino. Dizon, who headed the Department of Transportation for only three months before his new assignment, said contractors who are guilty of anomalies would be immediately banned. “The contractors of these ghost projects.... First of all, I will impose a lifetime blacklisting; I will ban them immediately. When a contractor of a ghost project, or if their project is proven to be substandard, there will be no more process, no more investigation. That contractor is automatically blacklisted for life. And of course, there would be a corresponding case,” he said. The DPWH and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) have also begun discussions regarding the blacklisting of erring contractors. Dizon said they are looking to bar them from bagging government contracts and also studying the possibility of “perpetually” revoking their licenses in line with the President’s directive to clean up irregularities in public works projects. “We really need to review and revamp the PCAB (Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board) because that’s the body that does all that. We will start with blacklisting [and] disqualification, because that can be done by the DPWH,” Dizon said. Support from mayors Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte and Valenzuela City Mayor Weslie Gatchalian on Monday hailed the designation of Dizon as head of the DPWH. Belmonte, in a statement emailed to The Manila Times, said Dizon has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership and dedication in every national responsibility entrusted to him — whether as former president and chief executive officer of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, as the country’s Covid-19 testing czar, or most recently as Transportation secretary. “In each role, he has delivered transformative results that directly benefited our people and strengthened public trust in government institutions,” Belmonte said. “In particular, we trust that Secretary Dizon will champion strategic, science-based, and community-driven solutions to the persistent problem of flooding, including the adoption and scaling of Quezon City’s Drainage Master Plan,” she said. These reforms, she said, are crucial in ensuring that every peso of public funds is maximized for infrastructure that safeguards lives and protects property and builds resilience in the face of climate change. Her statement came a day after parts of Quezon City were hit by flash floods. Similarly, Gatchalian threw his full support behind Dizon. “We, here in Valenzuela, have clear proof of Secretary Dizon’s dedication in his job when he went back here to see for himself the progress of several de-clogging, dredging operations as well as hauling of debris that we had agreed to carry out with DPWH and NLEX (North Luzon Expressway) Corp. after 80 percent of the city was submerged in floodwaters last July,” Gatchalian said. Both part of the Mayors for Good Governance (M4GG), Belmonte and Gatchalian said they were hopeful that under Dizon’s leadership, the DPWH could be able to restore its public image.