Give LGUs’ share of fire code fees, BFP urged

MANILA, Philippines — There are local government units (LGUs) that do not receive their share of the fees collected by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) in implementing the Fire Code of the Philippines, according to a lawmaker.

During a recent hearing of the House committee on appropriations on the BFP budget, Deputy Minority Leader Bernadette Herrera said LGUs are supposed to receive 20 percent as their “automatic share” of the fees collected by the BFP.

Herrera, Bagong Henerasyon party-list representative, said P300 million of the P2.5 billion in fire code inspection fees collected by the BFP in 2021 was not remitted to concerned LGUs.

The committee also found out that BFP was the one doing its own procurement in the past three years.

The agency did not go through the Procurement Service of Department of Budget and Management or the Philippine International Trading Center, the two agencies tasked to do the procurement for government agencies.

The committee has asked the BFP to submit a complete, updated list of fire code fee collection and remittance and procurements that it had conducted.