MANILA – The government, through the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), has started the process of claiming performance bond on questionable flood control projects.
Secretary Vince Dizon said they have asked three firms for the insurance payments of projects in the 1st District of Bulacan, which were found to be anomalous.
“For the Bulacan case, we already wrote a letter to three insurance companies --Liberty Insurance, Travelers Insurance and Sterling Insurance,” he said at a press conference after the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Insurance Commission (IC) headed by Commissioner Reynaldo Regalado on Wednesday at the IC office in Manila.
“We already sent a letter, the DPWH is claiming 30 percent for all those projects under the first case filed before the Office of the Ombudsman in the 1st district (of) Bulacan,” the DPWH chief added.
Asked if the companies have already responded, he said, “There is still no answer, maybe after the statement of Commissioner (Regalado), we may have an answer.”
Dizon assured that there will be more insurance claims since every case they will refer to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) will be followed by an application for the performance bond.
“Every case we refer to ICI, we will immediately write to the insurance companies, because it's in the contract, and immediately when we submit it to ICI, we write to them to file a claim, to start the (claiming) process,” the DPWH secretary said.
“I will repeat what the President (Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.) had said to recover the money of the people. Let's do everything we can to recover the money, let's do it quickly."
The memorandum signed by the two government agencies aims at better monitoring, validation and enforcement of surety bonds for infrastructure undertakings amid the flood control mess. (PNA)