DILG: BFP chief to be axed amid corruption complaints
An order to replace Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) chief Director Jesus Fernandez will be issued soon, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said on Tuesday, weeks after he said he had asked President Marcos to remove the official over “massive corruption” in the bureau.
Remulla told reporters that he was just waiting for the Office of the President to approve “this week or next week” his recommendation for the appointment of an officer in charge.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), which has jurisdiction over the BFP, has received 40 complaints about alleged anomalies in the BFP. Of these, 21 have been referred to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police for verification, he added.
“We will release all the evidence next week about the illegal activities of the BFP top management,” Revilla said, without giving additional details.
According to him, the complaints were apart from those that led to the filing of administrative cases against 11 BFP officials in the Ilocos, Eastern Visayas and Northern Mindanao regions for supposedly demanding money from applicants who wanted to enter the bureau. Two other bureau officials in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) were also accused of irregularities in the conduct of fire inspections.
Deeply entrenched
Remulla said the filing of cases was part of a larger effort to dismantle what he called a “deeply entrenched corruption network” inside the BFP, estimated to have cost the public P15 billion annually.
In a previous briefing, the DILG chief said they would be filing cases against Fernandez and at least 39 other former and current BFP officials before the Ombudsman for rigging bids for firefighting equipment from 2014 to 2025.
“For the last 20 years, this has been the system within the BFP with no one paying attention to it. Enough is enough. We have to break the culture of corruption inside the BFP,” Remulla said on Tuesday.
Among the illegal activities he cited were bureau personnel forcing business owners or establishments to buy fire extinguishers from them or demanding fees for full firefighting services.
