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Thursday, March 28, 2024

JBros takes lead, files papers for NBI BHS probe

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The winning contractor of the controversial Barangay Health Stations project on Monday said it has submitted “complete documents” to the National Bureau of Investigation to disprove allegations of anomalies made by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III last week in a Senate hearing.

While it welcomed the NBI’s fact-finding probe into the issue as ordered by Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra also last week, JBros said it had “made the first move” by filing the documents on the BHS the bureau would need “to determine the truth and the facts of the case and to disprove the allegations made by Duque, apparently to avoid paying JBros P2.9 billion the DoH owes the contractor.”

In a letter to NBI Anti-Graft Division chief Rachel Marfil Angeles, with the pertinent documents attached, Atty. Simonette Sibal-Pulido, who represents JBros, said the contracting firm has been “unjustly and unfairly maligned before the media for the failure of the BHS project.”

Sibal-Pulido added that JBros “trusts that after due investigation, appropriate criminal charges will be brought against officials who have violated the law.”

The BHS project, implemented under then-Health Secretary Janette Garin and the Aquino administration, aimed to establish 5,700 rural health units to ensure barangays have access to primary health care. Public elementary schools were to be identified as sites for the health stations.

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However, a task force the Department of Health created last April found only 270 barangay health stations out of 429 under JBros’ contract were completed. Of these, only eight had complete documents, the Duque-formed panel said.

JBros’ lawyer, however, said the issues surrounding this investigation should include pinpointing the individuals responsible for the department’s failure to deliver possession of all the sites on due dates, the reason Duque refuses to comply with the DoH’s contractual obligation to pay JBros’ first progress billing of P2.9 billion last March, and the secretary’s refusal to lift the suspension on Phase 2 of the BHS project.

The NBI would also need to unearth the reason the alleged anomalies came up only after JBros filed the claim for payment of damages with the Commission handling arbitration cases, Sibal-Pulido said.

On Duque’s announcement that he will continue to violate the contract, “such pronouncement is contrary to law and prejudicial to the contractor,” the lawyer said.

Sibal-Pulido stressed that the Health Secretary’s moves “constitutes a corrupt act punishable under Section 3 (e) of Republic Act No. 3019” or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

Meanwhile, the arbitration case filed by JBros against the department “includes claims for standby and other damages that could have been prevented had the DOH complied with its contractual obligations and continued the project,” JBros spokeswoman Atty. Julieanne Jorge said.

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