Almost 30 contractors blacklisted in anti-corruption drive: DPWH

Villar’s remarks came after President Rodrigo Duterte said corruption at the agency remains rampant where contractors are scheming with its personnel. (File photo: Mark Villar/Facebook)

MANILA – Close to 30 contractors have so far been blacklisted by the Department of Public and Highways (DPWH) as part of its anti-corruption efforts, its chief said on Thursday.

“We have blacklisted almost 30 contractors, this is one of the highest numbers of blacklisted contractors. We take the challenge of the President and we will continue to fight harder to stop corruption,” Secretary Mark Villar said in a Laging Handa presser.

Villar’s remarks came after President Rodrigo Duterte said corruption at the agency remains rampant where contractors are scheming with its personnel.

He added that they have introduced reforms to weed out corruption.

“We have the monitoring systems. So far, all of our projects have geo-tagging so we would know the condition or status of the projects. We continue to remain strict in our campaign,” he added.

Geo-tagging is the process of attaching location information in the form of geographical metadata to digital media like websites, videos, and photographs.

Villar is also optimistic that the agency’s proposed budget for 2021 would pass the tight scrutiny of lawmakers.

“We were at the (Senate) committee hearing yesterday (Wednesday) and we were able to answer the questions of Senator Panfilo Lacson,” he added.

Lacson flagged the agency’s allocation for local projects which increased to PHP229 billion from the original allocation of PHP176.15 billion.

“Sometimes, there are local projects that have a national purpose like roads going to tourism sites, roads going to airports. These maybe local projects but their significance is on a national scope,” he added.

Villar, meanwhile, assured that local workers are prioritized in the hiring process for infrastructure projects in the country.

He, however, said foreign workers are being hired for their technical expertise.

“Whenever there are new technologies coming from other countries, especially in foreign-funded projects, we need their (foreign workers) technical expertise. But eventually, we hope to transfer this technical expertise to our local workers. For now, we still need foreign workers,” he added.

More quarantine facilities

Meanwhile, Villar, the country’s isolation czar, said the DPWH is looking to construct over 20,000 isolation facilities for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) patients all over the country.

“To date, we have constructed almost 10,000 isolation facilities across the country. What’s good about our isolation facilities, it’s composed of individual quarters, every room has comfort room, air-conditioned.  Somehow our fellowmen will have a comfortable stay in case they will quarantined. We continue to construct these facilities and very soon we hope to hit more than 20,000 quarantine facilities across the country,” he added.

Aside from building more isolation facilities, Villar said they are also looking to upgrade hospitals or augment critical care facilities by building pop up hospitals.

Recently, the DPWH has opened the biggest mega quarantine facility in Metro Manila at Bagong Nayong Pilipino, Parañaque City.

The Solaire-PAGCOR Mega Quarantine Center has a 600-bed capacity for Covid-19 patients with mild and no symptoms.

It was constructed in less than two months, the facility will be manned by the Armed Forces of the Philippines Health Service Command and is being eyed to be operational by November.

The building of the facility was funded by the Razon Group was inaugurated last month along with a newly-constructed access road completed by the DPWH.