"We don't just lay pipes. We improve lives" - so goes the billboard displayed by the MWSS (whatever its name is).

That to me is the height of stupidity - unabashedly scandalous.

Or consider this. That agency (privatized whatever) has to dig what used to be a concrete road stretching form Circumferential Road in Antipolo to Masinag (in Antipolo just before Marikina City) to lay their pipes.

After having laid their pipes over a period of time that gave so much untold inconveniences even vehicular accidents to the motoring public, the dugged concrete road is filled with sand and then asphalted. Soon cracks showed on both sides of the dugged road.

What the national government or was it Rep. Puno did is to in fact, do a reconcreting of the whole 10-kilometer stretch. Again, it was done over a period of time that gave the public too much "inconveniences".

What is disturbing is the fact that, for those in the know, the lifespan of concrete roads built by the DPWH is that roads should last until 45 years. Now it is clear that the road destroyed by MWSS is way below its mid-life for it to be entirely changed with a new concrete road. What is this?

How can the DPWH allow MWSS to dug up on what are already paved concrete roads that cost a lot of money?

If there is anything the Ombudsman should investigate for a classic case of graft, it is this fact that MWSS is sort of permitted to destroy a road in its entirety without having to be indemnified for the destruction that it had caused - at the expense of taxpayers' money.

Tell me if this is not a case of graft?