News Roundup 25 September 2021
Sep 25, 2021 • 5 min Read
Philippines reports 16,907 new COVID-19 cases | PHILSTAR.COM – The Philippines on Saturday reported 16,907 more coronavirus cases, bringing the country’s overall count to over 2.47 million. The total COVID-19 infections in the Philippines stood at 2,470,235, the Department of Health said. No deaths were recorded on for the second straight day due to “technical issues in COVIDKaya,” the DOH said. COVIDKaya is a digital platform which stores data from all confirmed COVID-19 cases and their close contacts. “The Department of Information and Communications Technology is currently addressing issues encountered by the system. When the issue is resolved, the succeeding increase in deaths in the following reports will be due to the previous days’ backlog,” it said.
- Active cases: 165,110 or 6.7% of the total
- Recoveries: 27,120, bringing the number to 2,267,720
- Deaths: 0, still at 37,405
The positivity rate was at 23.6%, based on the test results of 74,606 people who got screened on Thursday.
Pharmally employee admits face shield tampering | PHILSTAR.COM – A former warehouse worker testified yesterday before the Senate Blue Ribbon committee that he and fellow workers were asked by Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. to tamper with the labels of old and substandard face shields meant for medical workers procured by the government to make it appear they were manufactured recently. This developed as senators expressed alarm over apparent attempts at cover up at the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management as several critical documents uploaded by the PS-DBM to its Google Drive – representing some P5 billion worth of transactions – for review of the committee went missing from the account the same day it was uploaded on Sept. 10. Sen. Risa Hontiveros presented a video of the interview taken under oath with the unidentified male witness, who was wearing a red hoodie and sunglasses, at the resumption of inquiry into the alleged anomalies in the purchase of COVID-19 supplies amounting to P42 billion using funds from the Department of Health (DOH). The witness said the warehouse has a “front name” of LB2 warehouse but was really operated by Pharmally, which has delivered face shields and other pandemic supplies to the yet undisclosed storage facility. “The face shields were delivered to the warehouse. What we do is repack them, we remove the certificates that they’re expired and replace them with new certificates with the present year (2021), from the expired year of 2020,” the witness said in Filipino in the video. “Even if the face shields were creased, yellowing or dirty, we were asked to repack them… we weren’t provided with gloves,” he said. The witness is no longer with the company.He said he was ordered by Krizle Grace Mago, an officer of Pharmally, to do the tampering, which happened sometime last month. He said some of the face shields were labelled “for kitchen” but Mago asked that they be separated and considered rejects. They were also asked to put labels “Philippine Government Property” and “DOH” on the face shields. The witness also said he once saw Mohit Dargani, one of the owners of Pharmally, visit the warehouse. He said he reached out to the committee after hearing news of alleged anomalies in the procurement of COVID-19 supplies. Upon questioning, Mago admitted to ordering the replacement of labels but that it was upon the instructions of Dargani. “That (order) is something I cannot deny,” she said. When asked by Sen. Richard Gordon, chairman of the committee, that tampering the face shields meant the company has “swindled” the government, Mago replied: “I believe that is the case.”
Tesda ‘miracle’: P4 billion spent in 13 days | INQUIRER.NET – Imagine the notoriously slow Tesda (or the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) spending billions in less than two weeks. Despite its historically low utilization of its budget, Tesda has “miraculously” done exactly that: obligating P4 billion in scholarship funds in 13 days — and alarming House Deputy Minority Leader and Marikina Rep. Stella Luz Quimbo. At the House’s plenary deliberations on Friday, Quimbo expressed doubt that the agency could spend its proposed P13.64-billion funding for next year given its past low-efficiency spending. “The historical data on the budget would show that the efficiency spending levels are really very low .… It’s doubtful if they can really absorb such a huge amount, considering that historically, it takes Tesda almost two years to execute a budget,” she said. Quimbo moved to defer deliberations on the agency’s proposed budget, a motion with which House Deputy Speaker and Pampanga Rep. Juan Pablo Bondoc agreed. “We join the minority, particularly in the alarm regarding the spending of Tesda … There are many questions to be answered,” Bondoc said.
Robredo: No one can accuse me of using OVP resources for politics | Manila Bulletin – Vice President Leni Robredo doesn’t fear calling out the government for allegations of corruption because she herself has never used funds of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for purposes aside from that of her work. Robredo made the statement as Filipinos await her decision on whether or not she will run for president in the May 2022 elections, with just days to go before the start of the filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs). In an interview with Radyo Katipunan on Friday, Sept. 24, the Vice President was asked to comment on some sector’s claims that she has been politicizing issues. She explained that she was confident about her standing in govenrment because people know that the accusations were not true. “Kaya malakas yung loob ko kasi wala ni isa man– Dito sa opisina namin, wala ni isa man na ma-a-accuse ako na gumamit ako ng resources ng office o tao ng office para sa politika (I’m confident because no one in our office can accuse me of using our resources or people for politics),” she said.
