(UPDATE) THE Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is strengthening its partnership with the private sector to help rebuild public trust in government and attract more investment to further boost the economy.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon on Thursday said the move is part of the DPWH’s reform agenda to ensure integrity and transparency in government infrastructure projects.
Dizon said it was the president who ordered the DPWH to expand its partnership with the business sector.
The DPWH will establish a “green lane” to encourage legitimate and major construction firms to join bidding programs to speed up construction of infrastructure projects, he said.
The “green lane” program is patterned after the Board of Investments agreements for qualified investors and companies.
“There’s no reason why we can’t do that in DPWH,” Dizon said.
The agency is already institutionalizing transparency and reform initiatives, while also expanding partnerships with the private sector like the recently launched Integrity Chain monitoring system, where the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry serves as one of the validators.
The Integrity Chain ensures traceable, auditable and accessible records to accredited validators of the Blockchain Council of the Philippines.
“By placing our projects on the Integrity Chain, we welcome the scrutiny of the private sector, academe and civil society. This is DPWH’s strong response to the president’s directive to ensure transparency and accountability is enforced for its projects,” said Dizon.
“This is a major step in ensuring that what we’ve seen in the past doesn’t happen again. And this is what the President keeps on repeating. Not only do we need to hold people to account, not only do we need to get the people’s money back, but even more important is we make sure that this [flood control scandal] does not happen again,” he said.
“From the budget process to the procurement process, to the award of the contract, to the implementation of the project, to the monitoring of the project, to the payments made to the contractors, to the acceptance of the project. Everyone should be watching now, everyone,” he said.
The Integrity Chain aims to transform infrastructure governance by providing a real-time public dashboard that tracks project spending and progress, enabling citizen feedback and anomaly reporting, and providing tamper-proof records to deter corruption.
The Integrity Chain Portal is https://www.integritychainph.org/.
