THE Duterte administration will pursue plunder charges against former Cabinet members in the Aquino administration, including former Interior secretary Mar Roxas, then Budget secretary Butch Abad and former Transportation secretary Jun Abaya, for the anomalous transactions that led to everyday woes of the riding public using the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 3, according to Malacañang Spokesman Harry Roque.
In the press briefing, Roque said aside from filing the plunder cases against former government officials involved in the MRT 3 crisis, the government also planned to change the ownership of the MRT 3 corporation as part of the long term solution.
The private owners of MRT 3 may also be held accountable for the daily glitches of MRT, he said, adding “changing the owners of MRT is another solution because we have had many problems with the current owners.”
“Accountability is part of the solution,” Roque said, saying the problem lay not just with BURI, the Busan Universal Rail Inc., the problem was with the current owners of MRT 3,” he said.
They are involved in awarding the contract to BURI, a company with absolutely no track record, Roque said.
He said there was already a government-to-government contract entered into by the Philippines and Japan that would enable Sumitomo to come back.
“This has been facilitated by the signing of an agreement between the governments of the Republic of the Philippines and Japan,” he said.
The Japanese firm has concluded already the survey of what needs to be done and Sumitomo found out that it was worse than they expected, he said.
However, Roque did not say when the MRT 3 would run normally without experiencing offloading hundreds of MRT riders, but claimed there were time tables presented to the Cabinet, and there would be an award to be made soon.