Gen. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), said on Sunday, July 4, that they coordinating with the office of Sen. Manny Pacquiao to verify if the senator indeed mentioned that there was corruption in the procurement of the nearly 3,000 body cameras.
This, as Eleazar said they received information about a social card circulating in the social media which tagged the body camera procurement as corruption-tainted, with tehe allegation being attributed to Pacquiao amid his word war with President Duterte.
Pacquiao already left for the United States to train for his next fight.
"I assure the public that there was no corruption in the procurement. The fund allocated by the Congress was fully accounted and in fact, we were able to save more than P45 million in the transaction,"said Eleazar.
He said fund that was saved from the procurement of the body cameras, amounting to a total of P45,111,006.28, was combined with the P19,429,717.08 savings from the recent improvement of the PNP Command Center, to procure a CCTV Rapid Deployment System for around P60 million.
The CCTV Rapid Deployment System will be used in counter-terrorism operations anywhere in the country. It is composed of 10 deployable CCTVs with Artificial Intelligence, video management system, 10 CCTV mobile trailers and 10 generators. Each camera of the CCTV Rapid Deployment System can be loaded with 200 pictures of wanted criminals and terrorists.
The delivery of the items are expected to be completed this month.
"If indeed Sen. Pacquiao said that there was corruption in the procurement of bodycams, we would appreciate if he could provide us the details and I assure him that we would look into it," said Eleazar.