Efforts to ban politicians' names and pictures on infrastructure billboards continue to snowball as the road sector made its commitment to closely work with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in the implementation of the new policy.

Calling itself Bantay Lansangan, the group's volunteers said they will conduct road monitoring for strict compliance of the revised standard project billboard which only include the contract amount, name of contractor, implementation period, and source of project funds.

“Scrutinizing the billboards is not new to our volunteers but this new policy will definitely give a new flavor to the monitoring practice,” said Vincent Lazatin, executive director of Bantay Lansangan.

Bantay Lansangan pledged its support to DPWH for the “depoliticization” of public service in such a way that politicians can no longer take advantage of the use of project billboards especially during elections.

In a study released in 2009 about road projects development in the DPWH, elected officials were identified as those who have gained the most from the practice.

“This tells us that the (DPWH) Secretary (Rogelio Singson) is determined to push for hard reform and hopefully he will succeed in insulating the department from undue political influence,” said Gus Lagman, Bantay Lansangan board member.

Singson earlier said politicians could put up their own billboards to say they initiated and funded project.

If politicians want to inform their constituents that they were really behind the project, the DPWH Secretary said he has no problem with it as long as they spend their own money for their billboards.

“I told them it is beyond my concern if they want to put up their own self-ad billboard beside the DPWH's. They could put there whatever they want to say, that I initiated this and that projects... this is beyond my concern," he said.

Singson has banned the placing of names and photos of politicians in public works projects, which tend to mislead people that the credit for the project should be attributed to the politicians.

But he came under fire for such move after members of the minority bloc opposed the revised guidelines on DPWH signboard structures.

They said that it won't promote transparency and instead make their constituents think that they were not doing anything out of their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel.