PCSO Rushes Flood Relief to Davao Amid Ghost Projects Reckoning

One person died and at least 1,200 residents fled their homes when the Talomo River burst its banks in Davao City on July 24. By the next morning, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), the state agency that funds charity and medical aid through lottery and sweepstakes ticket sales, had already activated regional offices and four private lottery partners to move relief goods into the city.

That speed is real, and PCSO General Manager Melquiades A. Robles is happy to say so. What gets less attention is where this flood happened. The wider Davao region is also where government investigators spent the past year documenting a flood-control project that was marked finished in 2022 and had barely been built by 2025.

PCSO Activates Its Network Before Davao’s Water Recedes

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. directed government agencies to move quickly once the flooding hit. PCSO responded by instructing regional branches to coordinate on the ground and by calling on its Authorized Agent Corporations (AACs), the private companies that sell PCSO’s lottery products, to help distribute relief.

Time is of the essence during calamities. Every hour counts in bringing much-needed assistance to affected families. Through the immediate mobilization of our regional offices and the invaluable support of our Authorized Agent Corporations, we are able to respond swiftly and extend help where it is needed most.

Robles said that in a statement explaining the rollout. He added that PCSO would keep working with regional offices, local governments and partner groups “to ensure that assistance reaches our affected kababayans as quickly as possible,” using the Filipino word for countrymen.

Talomo River Breaks Its Banks

The flooding traced back to heavy rain from the southwest monsoon that soaked Davao City through the night of July 24. Rivers and waterways overflowed across several barangays, catching residents off guard without a named typhoon anywhere near the city.

The Talomo River was the worst offender, inundating Los Amigos, Matina, Bangkal and the Talomo town proper as water rose close to rooftop level in places. Upstream, the Tugbok district flooded too, with residents in Bangkal, Riverside and Purok Gulayan in Barangay Catalunan Pequeño reporting people stranded on roofs overnight.

City tallies put Talomo’s toll at more than 220 families, over 800 people, with Los Amigos adding more than 60 families and at least 200 more people. The Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Davao regional office, in a separate count, logged 214 families it had assessed and said it stood ready to release augmentation support if the city requested it.

• What we know: one death and at least 1,200 people displaced across Talomo and Los Amigos; four PCSO agent firms mobilized within a day; a ₱96.5 million flood project in the wider Davao region sat mostly unbuilt for three years despite being logged as finished
• What’s unconfirmed: the exact peso value of what PCSO and its partners delivered to Davao City; whether DSWD’s 214-family count will reconcile with the city’s broader 1,200-evacuee estimate; when the Ombudsman will formally file the cases recommended against eight lawmakers tied to ₱92 billion in contracts

Neither figure cancels the other out. City disaster officials and the welfare department often count different things at different moments, evacuees moved versus families formally assessed for aid, and both numbers were still moving as of this week.

Four Gaming Firms Carry the Relief Goods

PCSO named four companies among the first AACs to respond: Hexaprime Inc., Magic Three Gaming Corporation, Northman Gaming Corporation and Antiguas Gaming Corporation. The agency said more agent firms are expected to extend support as the relief effort continues.

These firms are not charities. They are licensed operators that sell PCSO products, including small town lottery, or STL, a numbered-game product PCSO franchises out to private agents in specific territories. Hexaprime is one example: PCSO named it the sole authorized STL agent for Cagayan de Oro City and Misamis Oriental in October 2023, after canceling a previous operator’s permit.

• Hexaprime Inc. – PCSO’s authorized small town lottery agent for Cagayan de Oro City and Misamis Oriental since October 2023
• Magic Three Gaming Corporation – one of the four agent corporations PCSO activated for the Davao relief push
• Northman Gaming Corporation – among the first AACs to answer PCSO’s call on July 25
• Antiguas Gaming Corporation – the fourth firm PCSO named in its initial relief mobilization

The arrangement means the goods reaching flooded barangays this week trace back to ticket sales, not tax revenue. PCSO’s charity and calamity assistance funds come from the same gambling products these agent firms sell every day.

A ₱96.5 Million Flood Wall That Was Never Built

Roughly 250 kilometers southwest of Talomo, in the municipality of Jose Abad Santos in Davao Occidental, sits the flood project that became a symbol of the country’s larger problem. Records showed it fully paid and marked complete in 2022. When the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the national infrastructure agency, and the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) inspected it in September 2025, construction had started only three weeks earlier.

The project was valued at ₱96.5 million, roughly $1.7 million. DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon and ICI special adviser Benjamin Magalong toured the site together. Magalong pressed the Commission on Audit (COA) on why the payment had gone unchallenged for so long, asking why a notice of disallowance had not been issued in the past three years.

Rules require project signboards listing the contractor, cost and duration. There was none at Jose Abad Santos, so residents living beside it had no way of knowing a project even existed there.

A Billion Pesos in Thirteen More Projects

The Jose Abad Santos site was not isolated. The National Bureau of Investigation’s Davao office opened a review of 13 anomalous flood control projects in Davao Occidental, combined cost exceeding ₱1 billion, working from a list the Office of the Ombudsman provided. Investigators requested blueprints and payment records from COA to support the inquiry.

Zoom out further and the numbers get bigger. Mindanao Development Authority officials have said that ₱545 billion has gone to flood control projects nationwide since 2022, with thousands of contracts turning out undocumented, substandard or entirely fictitious. A separate COA fraud audit is underway in Bulacan province, in Central Luzon, where close to half of the region’s ₱548 billion flood control budget since 2022 was concentrated.

Marcos created the ICI in September 2025 through executive order, giving it power to investigate alleged irregularities in flood control and other infrastructure projects after public anger over the anomalies grew. That anger has not gone away. Mindanao’s development body has called the pattern a betrayal, arguing the stolen billions could have fixed the region’s actual infrastructure problems.

Accountability Moves Slower Than the Floodwater

In late October 2025, the ICI recommended criminal and administrative charges against six individuals: former DPWH undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, sitting senators Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada, resigned Ako Bicol party-list representative Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, COA Commissioner Mario Lipana and former representative Mitch Cajayon-Uy. The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines later confirmed that at least three aircraft linked to Co had already left the country before cases were filed.

By February 2026, DPWH and the ICI had gone further, recommending cases against eight lawmakers connected to firms that won ₱92 billion in DPWH contracts between 2016 and 2024. Those named have denied wrongdoing. None of the referrals had produced a final conviction as of this week.

Davao City adds its own political friction to that backdrop. The city is the Duterte family’s home base, and relations between Malacañang and that camp have collapsed since Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment by the House of Representatives in December 2024, part of the breakdown of the alliance that won the 2022 election. Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte publicly lashed out at Marcos again in April, accusing him of allowing his father to be taken into International Criminal Court custody.

PCSO says it is still watching Davao City and will send more help if local authorities ask. The ghost project 250 kilometers away has been sitting unfinished a lot longer than that.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is PCSO funded to give away relief goods?
PCSO’s charity, medical assistance and calamity relief programs run entirely on proceeds from its own lottery, sweepstakes and STL ticket sales rather than tax appropriations, which is why the agency leans on its private ticket-selling agents, not the national budget, during emergencies.

What is a Small Town Lottery agent?
An STL agent is a private company that bids for a territorial franchise to run PCSO’s numbers game in a specific city or province, collecting a share of ticket sales in exchange for running the legal, regulated version of a game once dominated by illegal operators.

Has anyone been criminally charged yet in the flood control scandal?
As of this year’s timeline, the ICI and DPWH have only recommended cases to prosecutors; the Ombudsman still has to formally file charges, and every named official or lawmaker has denied wrongdoing so far.

Why did Davao City flood without a named typhoon?
The flooding came from southwest monsoon rain, locally called habagat, that dumped enough water upstream overnight to overwhelm the Talomo River, a seasonal pattern that can produce flash flooding just as severe as a landfalling storm.