Wednesday, April 18, 2007 Was spreading CICC work illegal?
BUSINESSMAN Crisologo Saavedra yesterday made good his earlier threat to bring to the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas what he said were anomalous transactions surrounding the construction of the P515-million Cebu International Convention Center (CICC).
Saavedra, in a letter to Acting Deputy Ombudsman Virginia Santiago, asked for an immediate conference on the issue and suggested that Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, together with Capitol officials, be present.
He wants the governor preventively suspended and payment to the CICC contractors frozen.
In an interview at the anti-graft office, Saavedra said CICC architect Manuel Guanzon admitted in a recorded interview with broadcaster Leo Lastimosa yesterday that the CICC ate up about P650 million in government funds.
The governor, in a separate development, filed a libel complaint against Lastimosa last Monday.
Saavedra and Guanzon had a verbal clash over radio dyAB, with Saavedra saying he would have joined the bidding and offered a price of P17,000 per square meter.
But Guanzon quickly told him that he is not qualified to join the bidding for the CICC, the main venue of the Asean summit last Jan. 10 to 15.
“You are not qualified to bid. What is your capacity to build a building?” Guanzon said, adding, “I’ll give you P25,000 per square meter, you build it.”
Governor Garcia, for her part, said some people are trying their best to make the CICC an election issue or a political issue. “I guess they must be bankrupt of issues to hurl against me,” she said.
Garcia would rather let Guanzon answer Saavedra’s allegations, although she questions Saavedra’s competence.
“I guess he must really be an expert at computing the per meter cost of any construction because he owns a spa. I’m sure that gives him the expertise to determine the per square meter price of any building and to determine whether this particular construction should cost that much,” Garcia said.
She added that she does not know Saavedra personally although she met him years ago, when Saavedra filed a case against the Mactan-Cebu International Airport after his company Echelon failed to get the contract for its runway asphalt rejuvenation. Saavedra pointed out the budget approved by the Provincial Board for the CICC was only P515 million.
The additional expenditure, he said, was incurred because the project was subjected to “split bidding.” He said this is disallowed by Republic Act 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act.
“Only P100 million worth of the project, which covers the superstructure (the main edifice), was bidded legally and was awarded to WT Construction,” he said in both the interview and in his letter to Santiago.
“The rest of the project was carried out via negotiated bidding with nine to 12 other contractors,” he said, still quoting Guanzon in the interview with Lastimosa.
Saavedra said it was the negotiated bidding that made the cost of the CICC skyrocket.
Moreover, he alleged that the governor violated the procurement act when she negotiated with the other contractors.
In the same radio interview, Guanzon explained that contracts are expected to be spread out with projects of such magnitude.
Saavedra wants the anti-graft office to freeze the release of money to the contractors, saying that P650 million was already paid.
He also wants the ombudsman to place the governor under preventive suspension to protect pertinent documents relative to the construction and “to be fair” to Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano and Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza who were both preventively suspended for the allegedly overprice purchase of lamps and streetlights for the Asean summit. (KNR/MBG)
