DPWH: Papers on flood projects safe
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon assured the public on Thursday that all documents regarding flood control projects from 2022 to 2025 had been secured in the central office of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Manila, adding that those kept in the Bureau of Research and Standards (BRS) had digital backups.
A fire broke out in the BRS office in Quezon City on Wednesday afternoon. The DPWH, however, said that “no documents related to the ongoing investigation into flood control anomalies” were inside the building.
The BRS is responsible for conducting research, studies, pilot tests and formulating policies for government infrastructure projects.
“We don’t see any critical documents which may be critical to the ongoing investigation, plus all of them are backed by scanned copies,” Dizon said in a press briefing.
Asked where the papers for flood control projects were, Dizon said these had been secured in the central office.
“We have gotten all [the documents] from 2022 to 2025 and we are now receiving [documents from] earlier years but they are now all here, [being protected] in the central office,” he added.
Affected documents
During the same press briefing, newly appointed Public Works Undersecretary for Convergence Projects and Technical Services Lara Esquibil said that some of the documents affected by the fire were manuals, field testing reports, procurement reports, training-related papers and training certificates.
Esquibil clarified that the procurement reports were possibly for materials acquired by the BRS.
As for the cause of the fire, Dizon said based on a Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) report, it was due to a short circuit in the ceiling of the records section located on the building’s third floor. This corrected the initial findings of the DPWH that the blaze started when a computer unit in the materials testing division reportedly exploded, he added.
But Dizon said that until the BFP comes out with its final report on the cause of the fire, it would be premature to say if there was an intent to affect the ongoing investigation into anomalous flood control projects.
