By Pearl Gumapos
The Quezon City government on Tuesday night decided to terminate its contract with Zuellig Pharma Corporation’s booking services, EzConsult, after a series of technical difficulties experienced by the city’s residents.
According to the press release, the breaking point came on Tuesday afternoon, when disgruntled civilians had to endure a queuing system to book a slot, with some having to wait for hours.
“We have already given Zuellig ample time to improve their system upon their request and yet their system has crashed again for the 9th time. We don’t want to cause undue stress to our constituents who only want to register for vaccination,” Mayor Joy Belmonte said.
The city government recently issued an ultimatum to Zuellig asking them to improve their system quickly and provide all the deliverables.
“Earlier, they reported an upgrade of their system which supposedly could already accommodate up to 50,000 users at a time. However, their system crashed again when we opened new slots. Imbes na mapadali, napabagal pa ang ating registration process,” Belmonte said.
“Ang nakakalungkot, taumbayan ang nagdusa, at nawalang saysay ang pagsisikap ng ating mga medical frontliners at volunteers na ilang buwan nang nagsasakripisyo para mapabilis ang ating vaccination process,” she added.
According to City Attorney Orlando Casimiro, Zuellig has breached their contractual obligations to the city after failing to deliver on their commitment to improve their service as previously agreed.
“The Information Technology portion of the Service Agreement with the city government will be terminated and damages will be claimed against Zuellig because of the delays, inconvenience and frustration that our QCitizens have experienced,” Casimiro said.
Pursuant to Section 9 of the agreement, Zuellig is liable to pay liquidated damages amounting to one tenth of one percent of the contract price for every day of delay until the project is completed.
Since March 27 of this year, EzConsult reported several technical difficulties which caused the city government delays in providing vaccines to its citizens in a quick and timely manner.
In addition to the termination of the agreement, the city government is also considering filing civil and criminal charges against the company for its failure to meet its contractual obligations to the local government.
“We are filing appropriate charges against them through our Legal Department. We are doing this for the interest of our QCitizens and to protect their rights,” Belmonte said.
Meanwhile, the city government said that until the contract termination has been finalized, all ongoing bookings are valid. -rir
