By VINCE NONATO, LEILANIE ADRIANO, REYNARD MAGTOTO and CLTV 36
Was it a P1.4 billion well spent?
Airfreight 2100 (Air 21), one of the two freight and cargo forwarding firms awarded by the Commission on Elections a P1.4 billion contract to deploy poll machines on Monday, caused massive delays and confusion in polling precincts for delivering the wrong machine or failing to arrive in areas on time, monitoring done by VERA Files and its partners show.
The Commission on Elections is mandated by law to deploy the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines for testing and sealing a week ahead of the polls on May 13. Some poll officers in Luzon found the process faulty and inefficient.
But Comelec chair Sixto Brilliantes Jr. brushed off the claims, saying that it was only a matter of wrong labeling.
“If they see that they delivered the wrong machine, they return it; they don’t touch it. There’s an added expense but these are just small things,” he said, adding that he received such reports from only Digos, Davao del Sur and Tarlac.
A PCOS with the wrong serial number or without the identifying mark delivered to a precinct could raise suspicions that the machine could be fake.
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