Senator Raffy Tulfo criticized a move by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to take from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) the task of printing the national ID cards.
During the hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance recently, Tulfo asked why the BSP, which is tasked to print money, interfered with the printing of said IDs with a contract amounting to a whopping P28 billion.
Worse, the legislator said, after the PSA has gotten the project from BSP, the contract was passed on to AllCard, Inc. despite knowing that this company had previous problems with various government agencies, including delays in the implementation of the contract.
Since the National ID law was passed in 2018, only 36 million physical national ID cards have been printed, which is roughly a third of the government target of 92 million.
“Hindi lang delayed ang problema ng All Card kundi nakagawa pa ito ng malaking bulilyaso.”
“Ngayon, sa muli, delayed ulit ang All Card sa pagpapatupad sa kontrata naman nito sa BSP. Pero hindi lang delayed ang problema ng All Card kundi nakagawa pa ito ng malaking bulilyaso,” the lawmaker shared.
“BSP failed to correctly design the QR code for national ID cards since the design was too small and not enough to store important information. As a result of this, BSP may need to destroy millions of cards.”
According to the senator, BSP failed to correctly design the QR code for national ID cards since the design was too small and not enough to store important information. As a result of this, BSP may need to destroy millions of cards that have been initially printed to be replaced by a new design.
He also questioned why BSP tapped an Australian company to print our 1,000-peso note. Tulfo said this only means that Philippine money is imported and made in Australia.
He will file a resolution in aid of legislation to investigate these issues against BSP and AllCard.
