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Friday, August 04, 2006
Yap sets ‘expose’
The controversy swirling over the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) is turning into a case of he said, she said.
Dismissed general manager Adelberto Yap yesterday said Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia is preconditioning the mind of the people and putting malice on the refund he made on the purchase of helicopter fuel for her Suroy-suroy sa Sugbo.
Yap said Garcia knows that he will soon come out publicly and tell people about all the transactions at MCIAA.
“I have all the records of all Garcia’s flights paid for by discretionary funds of MCIAA. If the expenses of the other trips of Garcia, of which I was not the pilot, were paid by private persons, I have nothing to do with that,” Yap said.
He also said his expose will cover all unscrupulous airport personnel and members of the board.
At the Capitol, Garcia said Yap used her helicopter rides, which she took when she had two equally important activities in faraway towns, to get P100,000 from his discretionary funds for every MCIAA board meeting.
“We asked to pay for the fuel because these were not pleasure trips but he said this was donated by well-meaning individuals who want to help the province, only to find out to my horror that he was withdrawing P100,000 per board meeting,” the governor said last Wednesday.
Garcia is a member of the MCIAA board.
“I blew my top. Had I known, I would not have gone ahead with those rides, or I would have insisted on paying. He used me as an excuse and probably wanted me to be an unwitting ally to his shenanigans. I told him straight to his face, ‘How dare you?’” Garcia said.
She also said that Yap wanted Asean summit projects charged to his discretionary funds. “I told him, ‘you can’t do that,’” Garcia said.
Libel case
Capitol consultant Pablo John Garcia said they will file a libel case against Yap, who assumed his post in February last year.
“That is an imputation of an offense involving public funds. It is false and malicious. We will file the case so that he will have maximum use of his high-priced lawyers,” said Pablo John, a lawyer and the governor’s brother.
Garcia and Yap used to have a close working relationship. The governor even defended Yap’s appointment after the Civil Service Commission ordered Yap’s removal because he does not have civil service eligibility for the post of airport general manager.
But after the MCIAA board received documents on the alleged questionable and anomalous transaction at that airport, including the tampering of the MCIAA chapter to accommodate Yap’s appointment, Yap was suspended.
The suspension did not last long, though, because the MCIAA board dismissed Yap last Monday, after his lawyers from the Accra law firm sent MCIAA officer-in-charge Romeo Bersonda a letter that he (Bersonda) is liable for usurpation of authority and administrative, criminal and civil liabilities.
For his part, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña warned there are risks in changing airport officials before the Asean summit but dishonesty of officials calls for a change in management.
Decisive
Osmeña said it was good that the MCIAA Board was decisive in firing Yap.
The mayor found it disturbing that some personalities fabricated documents that misled the Civil Service Commission into approving Yap’s appointment.
“It’s an indication of outright dishonesty, which to me, if proven, is fatal. We should not tolerate dishonesty at that level because if you can be dishonest at one point, you can be dishonest in other things as well,” he told a news conference yesterday.
Yap said he was not surprised when Garcia insinuated that he cheated MCIAA with the fuel refund so the people will not believe him anymore once he comes into the open.
“Dili na lang ta magminaot,” Yap said, adding that “those who persecuted him have come out in the open with unclean hands.”
One of those who applied for the job of airport manager is Cebu City Planning Officer Nigel Paul Villarete.
Mayor Osmeñ said he already recommended Villarete “to whom it may concern, but at some point he has to sell himself.”
In a separate interview, Villarete admitted he is still interested in the position, but he will not push himself to get it.
Purchases
For now, the focus is on Yap, who allegedly made several purchases through direct contracting with exclusive dealer scheme as well as emergency purchases during his stint as airport general manager.
The transactions that a committee is looking into include the purchase of radio communication equipment that had “an express reference to a brand name,” and that the entity awarded the purchase “is not an exclusive dealer” contrary to what was stated in the documents.
Aside from these violations of the procurement law, investigators also asked Yap to answer findings that communication equipment units were overpriced.
The equipment units were bought in August 2005 from MS Electronics Center at P168,000 although the original bid of the company was only P92,000.
Also, the requisition voucher pegged the price at only P100,000.
Another transaction of similar questionable processes was the purchase from the same company of P455,000 worth of handheld radios and spare battery packs.
The approved price was only P300,000 and MS Electronics was considered an exclusive distributor when MCIAA records show that another company submitted a bid and was also certified as an authorized dealer.
There was also a third transaction for Kenwood radios, still with MS Electronics, in the amount of P386,750. The same purchase specified a brand, considered MS an exclusive dealer, and greater than the approved price of P350,000.
Emergency
A fourth purchase from MS was worth P227,500 and bore the same violations.
There’s also a list of purchases of goods and services or projects through the ”negotiated procurement in case of imminent danger scheme” under Section 53 of the new law on government procurement.
The questioned procurements were allegedly done through the scheme despite the absence of calamity or other cases posing danger to lives and property.
On April 1 and April 15, Yap issued certificate of emergency purchase for the “repair of damage fence at sewage treatment plant.” Conditions of the law for such emergency purchases such as natural or manmade calamities were reportedly not met.
The investigation committee also found a list of emergency works that did not meet the conditions for the “security fence and one unit elevated guard post,” the supply of one unit reconditioned 21-seater Toyota coaster, the purchase of tables, chairs and cabinets for the MCIAA control room and airconditioning units, among others.
In an earlier radio interview, Yap said that “everything has its own proper time and place,” and that he will answer the charges in court.
“I did not ask for this job. You give me a job and I do the job to the best of my ability. That’s what I did there. I just want to clear my name,” Yap said. (EOB/JPM/LCR)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 4, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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