How the BFP is trying to plug resource shortages blamed on corruption

MANILA — While top Bureau of Fire Protection officials face graft allegations in the millions of pesos in what Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla calls a “P15-billion-a-year-industry”, government firefighters continue to struggle with not having enough equipment and personnel.

Remulla early this year said the agency is taking action to eradicate “cancerous” corruption in the bureau.  

The Office of the Ombudsman on September 3 dismissed from service and filed indirect bribery and graft charges against former BFP chief Jesus Fernandez over allegedly receiving P14.7 million in bribes for the P485-million procurement of 132 ambulance units.

Fernandez has pleaded not guilty to one of the two graft cases against him before the Sandiganbayan Second Division. 

Remulla said he was personally offered bribes of P1.5 million per fire truck as his supposed cut in BFP procurement deals.

Several other supposed corruption schemes were uncovered this year, alleging that its top officials and staff were engaged in illegal practices in procurement, recruitment, promotions and others. 

Amid these, the fire bureau’s personnel, equipment and infrastructure, for which public funds are supposedly used, remain not enough.

The BFP said it has 2,997 fire trucks, 33 aerial ladders, 573 ambulances, 105 rescue vehicles, 57 rescue boards and 932 motorcycles nationwide. 

During the Senate budget hearing last week, BFP Chief Wilberto Rico Neil Kwan Tiu said the standard truck-to-population ratio of 1:28,000 requires 4,178 trucks deployed nationwide. 

The country is still short by 1,181 trucks. 

Of the 1,493 municipalities in the Philippines, 106 have no trucks and 61 do not have fire stations.

Most of these are in remote areas or in Mindanao, where new municipalities were recently established. 

The BFP was allocated P487.5 million for fire trucks and P392.5 million to build fire stations this year but that money has yet to be put to use.

Kwan Tiu said the construction of 35 fire stations is still awaiting further evaluation by the Department of Budget and Management, while the procurement of fire trucks is still pending review due to a revision in specifications to match the planned government-to-government purchase with South Korea. 

When asked for the cause of the delay, Remulla said “hundreds and hundreds of millions” of funds were spent in corrupt deals before he assumed office in October 2024. 

Meanwhile, the National Capital Region needs at least 500 trucks for the 14 million people in Metro Manila.

It has only 250 trucks and 3,694 personnel, despite comprising most of the richest cities in the country.  

Next year, the BFP is expecting 108 new 1,000-gallon fire trucks, 50 500-gallon fire trucks, 132 ambulances and six collapsed structure search and rescue (CSSR) trucks in the pipeline, said bureau spokesperson Anthony Arroyo. 

The BFP also gets 2,000 additional personnel annually, a number he says is too small.

As the budget deliberation continues in Congress, he said the bureau is proposing 2,000 more additional personnel to meet the standard fireman-to-population ratio, as well as 82 ambulances and 74 CSSR trucks next year.

Aside from former chief Fernandez, the Department of the Interior and Local Government also announced March this year the filing of administrative and criminal complaints against 45 current and former officials of the BFP over alleged anomalous procurement of fire trucks from 2018 to 2024. 

The DILG also flagged a 250-percent increase in the price of 1,000-gallon fire trucks to nearly P15 million in 2024 from about P5.97 million per unit in 2014.

“Hindi inflation ang nagpataas ng presyo ng mga firetrucks, corruption (Corruption, not inflation, caused the fire trucks’ price surge),” Remulla said then.

The BFP also relieved all its fire safety inspectors in Metro Manila in April this year over alleged involvement in illegal transactions. 

The BFP was allocated with P1 billion for fire truck acquisition in Metro Manila in 2024. 

In 2025, P67.5 million was allocated for new trucks in Batangas, P800 million for all terrain amphibious rescue vehicles, and P185.5 million for firefighting and rescue tools, equipment and supplies. 

Remulla said the BFP is entering a government-to-government deal with South Korea for around 1,500 trucks over the next three years.

Without middlemen involved, the trucks will be at P9.5 million each from P16 million, a 40-percent reduction.

“We feel that this is most advantageous to Filipinos, and it will eliminate the corruption within the system,” Remulla said.

The BFP has also stopped calling for bids on procurement since 2025 to avoid doing business with corruption-prone joint ventures, said Arroyo.

He assured the public however that at present, the bureau is still receiving staggered deliveries of new equipment purchased in 2024 and earlier. 

Arroyo explained that the trucks will be distributed to local governments without trucks or that have requested additional units.

In August this year, around 200 officials and personnel were also placed under investigation over an alleged “slot-for-sale” scheme, where they reportedly demanded money from applicants to secure slots in their preferred regions. 

A senior fire officer in Pampanga was arrested for allegedly offering a recruitment slot in exchange for P500,000, later reduced to P300,000. 

Arroyo said the scheme prompted BFP to transition to electronic hiring this year, with a system-generated process that limits applicants’ contact with BFP staff. 

“Hindi dahil sa palakasan. Merit-based na tayo, system-generated, at eventually, wala nang pagkakakilanlan ang nag-a-apply,” he said, adding that QR codes are now being used to identify applicants. 

(Not politics, but merit-based and system-generated. Eventually, applicants will be completely anonymous. )

The new process was implemented this year in selecting the 2,504 new personnel, who are now undergoing training.

The bureau, however, immediately saw a loophole after a staff member from the NCR was caught contacting applicants whose names had been posted on Facebook.

Arroyo said the BFP is continuously coordinating with the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group to catch personnel involved in the “slot-for-sale” scheme.  — With reports from Karen De Guzman and Harlene Delgado, ABS-CBN News