Deflecting praise for his recent actions, Batangas 1st district Rep. Leandro Legarda Leviste has pitched a way for authorities to truly get to the culprits of substandard or "ghost" flood control projects in the country.

"We should have a comprehensive technical audit of DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) projects," Legarda Leviste told reporters in Batangas on Monday afternoon, Aug. 25.

"Because if we're only asserting na nandadaya ang mga contractors, kaya wala pa pong mga nasampahan ng kaso (Because if we're only asserting that the contractors are cheating, then that's why not cases have been filed yet)," he said.

Legarda Leviste displayed his sincerity on the flood control projects issue with his eagerness to determine whether or not the Filipino people got their money's worth from these crucial projects, instead of talking about his much-hailed rejection of a nine-digit bribe from a DPWH district engineer that grabbed headlines on Sunday night

"I would like to take this opportunity to set in perspective what is the issue...it is not a single incident [of attempted bribery]...the real issue here is the substandard projects of DPWH, which we have been investigating for the past weeks or months in fact,” he said.

“This is not about the amounts that have been mentioned in the media about the incident last week, it is about whether the public is getting its money’s worth on the supposedly over P1 trillion that has been spent on flood control projects,” added the 32-year-old.

The recent spate of typhoons and subsequent disastrous flooding in various parts of the country has placed DPWH officials and lawmakers under the microscope. Allegedly, they collude to gain juicy kickbacks, leaving the flood control projects compromised.

"Pero kung i-audit natin ang mga projects (But if we audit these projects), which are out there in the open across the country and on the Sumbong sa Pangulo website, then we have evidence for much bigger cases to be filed," Legarda Leviste said.

In a statement, Legarda Leviste's office confirmed that a case against DPWH Batangas 1st District Engineer (DE) Abelardo Calalo would be filed at the Office of the Batangas Provincial Prosecutor on Tuesday, Aug. 26.

Calalo allegedly offered the young solon up to P360 million in kickbacks for projects in his district last Friday. Legarda Leviste reponsded by staging an entrapment operation with police that led to Calalo's arrest.

But he said in the interview that "The case that should be discussed is more than just an incident with one official of DPWH."

"What we're trying to fix is not only the incident regarding one personnel; we're trying to fix the hundreds of millions of pesos of missing material on the flood control projects in the first district of Batangas which can also serve as an example for districts in the rest of the country," he said.