Philippines ‘ghost’ flood projects leave residents stranded

PLARIDEL, Philippines: The dike meant to protect the Philippine town cost taxpayers nearly $2 million, but when a minister visited this month he found little more than dirt hastily dumped along the river’s banks. Residents of Plaridel town in Bulacan province, north of the capital Manila, could have told him what happened — contractors had only just begun a project that government officials marked “completed” more than a year earlier. The dike is one of more than 100 flood-control projects at the center of one of the country’s biggest corruption scandals in decades.

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