Saturday, March 17, 2007 Tanodbayan suspends all lamp payments By Karlon N. Rama & Charmaine Y. Rodriguez Of Sun.Star Cebu
THE Tanodbayan is stopping the release of “any amount” intended for the two contractors who supplied the allegedly overpriced Asean summit lampposts.
President Arroyo, for her part, issued yesterday a directive for the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC), headed by Chairman Cornelia de Guzman, to look into the expenditures during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit and to “hold accountable and liable the persons involved” in the issue.
“GMA is angry over reports of overspending and innuendoes of corruption,” Secretary Cerge Remonde added.
The amount that Tanodbayan Merceditas Gutierrez withheld includes the P18-million balance on a P120-million contract that covers the supply of 889 of some 1,860 lampposts.
It also covers the P3.1-million retention fee owed to Fabmik and which the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) was ready to release in lieu of a surety bond.
But also yesterday, a Cebu-based official of the Fabmik Construction and Equipment Corp. denied there was overpricing in the lampposts they supplied.
Parts only
Joy Barza, Fabmik project manager, said the importation documents that Sun.Star Cebu quoted merely indicated the prices of certain components of the lampposts supplied and not its overall value.
“The shipment that arrived merely contained parts of the whole. We had to incorporate it with other shipments to form the final product. We didn’t get it all from one supplier. One supplier supplied one particular part, maybe. And it is impossible to compute the cost based only on the cash invoice of one or two suppliers,” she said.
Tanodbayan Gutierrez issued the cease-and-desist order against Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan and Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya yesterday afternoon, citing the “urgent need to protect the interest and prevent further damage to the government” and invoking a provision in the Ombudsman Law.
“This order shall remain effective until revoked,” said the two-page order that mentions both Fabmik Construction and Equipment Co. and Gampik Construction and Development Inc.
Businessman Cris Saavedra, who together with the party-list group Bayan Muna filed the original complaint that led to the investigation, welcomed the issuance of the cease-and-desist order.
“It would have seemed pointless to pursue the investigation with the knowledge that those responsible already got paid,” he said yesterday.
Stop payment
The Tanodbayan, in effect, also stopped payment for a second contract, again with Fabmik and Gampik, whose actual value remains unknown. The second contract covers the supply of an unspecified number of lampposts in Lapu-Lapu City.
According to Assistant Director Marlina Alvizo, the 889 lampposts in the P120-million package include the supply and installation of 360 lampposts in Cebu City, each worth P85,000.
It also includes 300 of the same P85,000-units in Mandaue; 89 of an additional 124 lampposts worth P224,000 each also in Mandaue; and the 140 single, double and triple-arm streetlights worth from P314,698 to P350,090 each, or a total of P44.89 million, again in Mandaue.
Alvizo is with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DWPH) regional office.
Fabmik’s Barza said the cease-and-desist order would prejudice her company, saying they have liabilities as well.
She stressed that the contract was aboveboard because they only transferred their cost, adding a margin covering their own costs and the cost of business, to the DPWH.
“As far as we are concerned, we just submitted bids. Everyone is free to submit their bids,” she said. She maintained that if the cost got bloated, then it must be because of the installation and other charges.
High cost
“With the high cost of almost everything nowadays, it is just normal that things are more expensive,” she added.
Importation documents earlier showed the value of the lampposts used in the summit when they were shipped to the consignees Fabmik and Gampik.
Based on the document prepared by Zhongshan Guzhen Street Lamp Factory in Guangdong, China, the 1,046 lampposts they delivered to the Port of Cebu for Gampik only cost RMB 234,304 (Chinese Yuan Renminbi) or P1,476,115.
This places the value of each lamppost, the ones commonly seen in Cebu and Lapu-Lapu and tagged at P85,000 each, at RMB224 or P1,411 each.
Likewise, based on the invoice prepared by the Valmont Industries (China) Ltd. for Fabmik, the 730 lampposts they sent to Cebu—the single, double and triple-arm models—only cost $295,529 or, at P49 to a dollar, P14,480,921.
These models are the ones that, according to the DPWH, cost from P314,698.33 to P350,090.48 each, inclusive of installation.
“Well, it is already with the ombudsman. So I guess we cannot do anything but wait for the outcome,” Barza said.
Dismay
Remonde and DPWH Assistant Secretary Raul de Asis had to answer questions and react to comments and jokes about the lampposts issue during the Government Infrastructure Forum 2007 at the Casino Español de Cebu yesterday.
Remonde is the chairman of the Infrastructure Monitoring Task Force.
After he presented the proposed P2.42-trillion infrastructure projects the government plans to implement under the Medium Term Public Investment Program from 2006 to 2010, a barrage of questions on transparency and accountability were raised during the forum, attended by about 100 participants from the business, government and nongovernment sectors.
“We have to be more strict about accountability. I tell you, I’m more embarrassed than you about this overpricing in Cebu,” Remonde told forum participants.
When asked about what the government is doing about the Philippines’ ranking as the most corrupt country in Asia, Remonde said it is just “based on perception.”
When he asked, “Where does this perception come from?”, a participant quickly answered, “Lampposts.” That brought the house down.
Bad light
Remonde later told reporters that the President lamented how the controversy, which involves officials of the public works department and the summit’s host cities Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu, affected the otherwise successful summit.
Cebu Business Club president Dondi Joseph said the lack of transparency in government will hurt investor confidence.
“We will call a spade, a spade,” he said, adding that they will help in efforts to solve corruption. The club and the Cebu Investment and Promotions Center sponsored the forum.
DPWH’s planning head De Asis, who represented DPWH Secretary Emmanuel Bonoan, also came prepared and discussed the agency’s efforts to curb corruption, instead of planned projects.
De Asis, who heads the agency’s Integrity and Anti-Corruption Team initiated by PAGC, said they hope the anti-graft office will resolve the matter “swiftly.”
“For as long as this is not resolved, we’re continuously put in a bad light. It’s unfair to people who are trying to work for changes, for reforms,” he told reporters after the forum.
“What we’re (the team) doing is just not enough to put an end to these things, to these corrupt ways that some of our people our doing,” he added.
Road fund
De Asis, however, could not comment on the lamppost controversy, saying he is not privy to the case.
But he confirmed that the putting up of the lampposts on a private resort in Mactan was covered by a memorandum of understanding, which provided that the lampposts will be removed after the summit.
He added that although he said they could no longer impose a preventive suspension on local DPWH officials pending the lampposts purchase investigation, he assured that they could hold payments to the suppliers if they have existing projects with the agency.
He also confirmed that the funds used for the Asean summit expenses were from the Motor Vehicle Users Charge and not from the regular DPWH budget.
This means, the expenditures were approved by the Road Board based on the list of projects submitted by the DPWH.
The Road Board is composed of the DPWH, Department of Finance, Department of Budget and Management and three private sector representatives.
Integrity
De Asis assured, however, however, that an integrity team will soon be set up in regional and division offices.
Sanctions for red tape and an encouragement for rank-and-file employees to be whistleblowers are among the aims of the team.
Tourism Secretary Joseph Durano, however, said Cebu benefited from the lampposts, which are lighting up roads leading to hotels.
“(But) Again, it doesn’t justify the alleged overpricing. That really has to be resolved,” he said in a separate interview.
“It’s already there, why take it out? The remedy there is the reimbursement and whoever is responsible for it should be penalized,” he added.
