QC aborts 40 ‘anomalous, abandoned’ projects to augment its COVID-19 vaccine funds

MANILA, Philippines — At least 40 projects in Quezon City deemed either anomalous or unfinished had been terminated in order to augment funding for COVID-19 vaccine procurement and to bankroll the city government’s pandemic response.

Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte said on Tuesday that she ordered an internal audit of all existing projects in the city, which led to the discovery of these alleged anomalous projects.

“I set up an audit system, an internal audit system, to review all of the existing projects not just our government but our previous government. And we noticed that we have about 40 government projects from the previous administration that are either anomalous, abandoned and unfinished or never been started,” Belmonte said over ABS-CBN News Channel, when sought for comment on the city’s source of funds for its vaccination program.

“There’s a lot of funds tied up to these projects. I followed the law, studied the law very well with our lawyers, and we are able to terminate these 40 projects at least and we are able to free up more than a billion of pesos as well to add for the coffers of the city, which will be used for COVID response,” she added.

Previously, the local government said its engineering department, legal department and Internal Audit System were evaluating city projects and recommended to end non-performing, delinquent, or anomalous contracts.

After its internal auditing, about 40 contracts were flagged and endorsed for cancelation, including Phase II and Phase III in the construction of the QC Convention Center. The Phase II of the city’s convention center began in March 2019 and is supposed to be finished by August 2019.

The internal auditing was conducted to streamline the city’s 2021 budget to prioritize more of its urgent projects, including coronavirus disease pandemic response.

Quezon City currently secured 1.1 million doses of British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines, which covers 550,000 of the locality’s constituents.

On Monday, Quezon City documented a total of 28,737 cases of coronavirus disease including 867 active cases, 27,088 survivors and 782  fatalities.

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EDV