The Commission on Elections said today that the employees who were caught bringing out Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drives from the joint suppliers’ warehouse in Manila have been terminated after a thorough investigation process.

“Based on the findings of the investigation, the employees inadvertently placed the defective USBs in their pockets and forgot to return them in their proper places before they left the warehouse for their afternoon break,” COMELEC spokesman James Jimenez said.

“It may be an honest mistake of the employees but we have to enforce the rules against any violations of our security protocols. After careful investigation, we have decided to terminate even the warehouse supervisor because we need to practice command responsibility,” Smartmatic- Sahi spokesman Vince Dizon said.

“As a policy, all our employees need to abide by our strict security regulations and protocols in all our warehouses both in Manila and Mindanao,” Dizon explained.

“We would like to assure the public that the Commission will never allow anybody or any group to tamper the integrity of the upcoming poll automation in the ARMM region,” Jimenez said, adding that the security regulations have been stepped up in the warehouse to ensure the integrity of the voting machines that will be deployed to Mindanao. ###