Wednesday, April 23, 2008 Lawmaker seeks ban of 'textbook scam' publishers
BACOLOD Representative Monico Puentevella is set to pass a resolution that would ban at least five publishing companies involved in the alleged multimillion-peso textbooks scam.
The five publishing companies are JTW Corporation, SD Publications Inc., Vibal Publishing House Inc. and Lamco Paper Products Co. Inc. and Watana Phanit Printing Company.
The lawmaker made this statement when asked on the status of the inquiry on the alleged multimillion-peso textbooks scam.
Puentevella delivered a privilege speech on March 11 detailing the complaints by some educational institutions and the related progress of the investigation of the House committee on education with regard the textbooks scam.
In his privilege speech, the lawmaker talked lengthily on the publication of the Department of Education (DepEd) high school textbooks riddled with "factual errors". The book 'Asya: Noon, Ngayon at sa Hinaharap', is published by Vibal Publishing Inc. The public school version, however, is published by SD Publications, a sister company of Vibal.
Puentevella said members of the Instructional Materials Council of the committee found out that the textbooks had "grave errors", but the committee did not recommend the filing of criminal charges against the education officials after the apology of former Secretary Ricardo Gloria and the pullout of 36 other titles found to have glaring errors in facts, grammar, concepts and illustrations.
He also said DepEd did not pull out the 1.14 million copies of the Asya book in some 5,000 public schools since the history textbooks were due for replacement anyway, adding that sending out teaching notes would be a better way of making corrections.
Puentevella added related hearings conducted by the Senate also found irregularities in the bidding for the procurement of textbooks worth P2-billion, under the World Bank's second social expenditure management project (Semp-2) contract. It also further questioned the award of the contract to the Vibal Group, which the Senate investigators said, has cornered three fourths or 75 percent of the contracts under the WB program since 1999 amounting to P 2.65 billion.
Further probe alleged that Vibal and one of its reported foreign partners - Watana Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd. - were awarded a P500-million supply contract despite having been disqualified due to alleged conflict of interest after the Inter-Agency Bids and Awards Committee of the DepEd and the TWG found out there were interlocking directors, officers and majority stockholders among Vibal, SD Publications and LG & M as shown in the articles of incorporations of the three companies.
Watana has also allegedly authorized LG & M to represent the company in the DepEd bidding for the Semp-2. Based on the figures from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the contracts involved the delivery of textbooks and teachers' manuals on 'Sibika' grades 1-3, 'Heograpiya, Kasaysayan at Sibika (HeKaSi)' grades 4-6 and 'Araling Panlipunan' grades 1-4 and were awarded to Watana Phanit Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd., Vibal Publishing House Inc. And Daewoo International Corp, Puentevella said.
"We cannot deny the deteriorating state of Philippine education, particularly in public elementary and high schools. Among the factors which were pointed to as having caused this negative standing of our basic education include classroom shortage, unqualified instructors and faulty reference materials," he added.
"In the interest of our young generations whose future rests on the quality of education they gain from our public schools and academic institutions, I strongly appealed before the Congress that a full-blown investigation be conducted by appropriate House committee or committees to look into this controversy to the end of crafting remedial measures to ensure that erring suppliers and government officials would be held accountable and prevent the recurrence of these improprieties," Puentevella said.
In the meantime, Puentevella stressed he will seek the banning of these publishing firms from further transactions with the government to avoid unnecessary complications of the problem. (Karl G. Ombion)
