Saturday, November 10, 2007 City puts P49-million BTS project in check By Danilo V. Adorador III
NO ADDITIONAL taxpayers money will be funneled into Cagayan de Oro's P49 million Barangay Telephone System Project, a City Hall official said.
The project contractor, Supplier Contractor and Networking Telecommunication (Scantel) Inc., earlier said fixing the long-delayed telephone project would require newer or additional equipment--the cost of which would be partly shouldered by the City Government.
City Officer Planning Officer Estrella Sagaral immediately spurned the idea, saying the City was in no mood of infusing more funds to the project.
"No way. That's against the law," Sagaral told this paper, adding that the move would violate government auditing regulations.
Given only until December by Mayor Constantino Jaraula to finish the project, Sagaral said Scantel may opt to shoulder the cost of any modification or replacement to the existing equipments--but in no way that the City would take part in any expenses outside of the signed contract.
Scantel had been paid a total of P31,544,761.94--the last payment being made on December 2005, documents from the Commission on Audit (COA) show.
Francisco Villapando, Scantel president, said all payments made to them were on-per-delivery basis of specific telecommunication equipments, and that the equipments are intact and open for inventory.
The company was awarded and began working on the project in 2003, but nearly four years after the project started, all of 17 recipient far-flung barangays are still without a single telephone connection--as the project has envisioned.
Delays marred the project, with both Scantel and officials of the previous Emano administration providing cocktails of justifications that did not apparently sit well with state auditors.
In its 2006 report, the Commission on Audit (COA) commented that the project has "incurred substantial delay because of the non-completion of technical requirements needed in the implementation of the project thus depriving beneficiaries of adequate and efficient telephone system."
Among the reasons for the delay, Villapando said, was the failure of the government and Scantel technicians to anticipate that some recipient barangays are located behind the mountains where the transmitter stood--thus blocking communication signals.
Mayor Jaraula, who inherited the project from former Mayor Vicente Emano--now a vice mayor--vows to complete the project before the year ends.
That puts a pressure on Scantel, which said it might be able to beat the deadline with the cooperation of the City.
He said Scantell and the City Government were still negotiating whether to replace all telecommunication equipments previously delivered, or keep them in use and add supplemental devices to keep the old ones working.
