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NAMFREL Signs Grant Agreement with the Partnership

for Transparency Fund

6 September, 2010

 
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v Manila, Philippines (NAMFREL) September 6, 2010- On September 6, the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) signed a grant agreement with the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF) for the second phase of a project aimed at monitoring the procurement, delivery and stocking of essential drugs and medicines. The project, entitled Medicine Monitoring II, will build on the experience gained through the first project phase in reducing corruption in a vital area of public service. NAMFREL will continue to work with the Department of Health and deploy volunteers at critical stages in the cycle from procurement to management of stocks of drugs and medicines.
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The first phase in 2005, over 1.7 billion pesos worth of Department of Health (DOH) procurement items and services were successfully monitored under Medicine Monitoring Project. In 2006, after NAMFREL reported that there were hospitals that published incomplete bid ads, DOH issued an order to all hospitals and health offices to observe the provisions in the Government Procurement Reform Act of 2003. In the same year, after the discovery by NAMFREL volunteers of unadvertised procurement worth P11 million, the DOH, through its Integrity Development Committee (IDC),
halted the said procurement and the bidding was declared a failure. The following year, volunteers endorsed a case of procurement irregularities to the office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas (the case remains active).
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The second project phase will focus on 21 hospitals and 7 regional health offices, selected on the basis of reports from the government’s Commission on Audit. The grant agreement was signed by Mr. Eric Jude O. Alvia, Secretary General of NAMFREL, and Mr. Geert van der Linden, PTF Board member.
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