Tuesday, October 09, 2007 City Hall to make ‘emergency’ buys for anti-dengue
CEBU City’s bids and awards committee (BAC) will go “shopping” for motorcycles and communication gadgets for the dengue task force and agreed yesterday on an “emergency” purchase of medicines and hospital supplies.
Although the new procurement law allows a local government unit (LGU) to purchase goods directly from the stores in cases of emergency, City Administrator Francisco Fernandez said they will exercise extra caution to ensure proper utilization of the calamity funds.
Republic Act 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA) allows other modes of procurement to hasten the purchase of supplies under an emergency situation, without having to go through the regular bidding procedures, he said.
In this case, City Hall needs to purchase P5 million worth of medicines, hospital supplies, transportation and communication supplies, food, chemicals and other materials for the preventive measures and disaster response to dengue problems.
During their meeting yesterday, the BAC agreed on an emergency purchase of P4.49 million worth of supplies and shopping for two motorcycles and cellphone cards amounting to P512,880.
“Although it’s an emergency purchase, meaning we can go directly to the store to buy the items, we will canvas all the items to make sure we get the best deal, but it should not be a cause for any delay,” Fernandez told Sun.Star Cebu.
As for the purchase of motorcycles, the BAC will canvas with at least three regular City Hall suppliers to get the best deal and purchase directly from the supplier who will offer it at the lowest cost to the City.
The City Council approved last Wednesday the appropriation of P5 million to be charged against the calamity funds after all 80 barangays in the city were declared to be under a state of calamity because of the increasing number of dengue cases.
The amount will be used for the free hospital services for suspected dengue patients, as well as education and information drive on prevention and early detection of signs and symptoms of dengue.
As of Sept. 30, 1,000 cases of dengue have already been recorded, 25 of which resulted in death.
The BAC tackled yesterday the purchase requests from the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC), City Health Department (CHD), Department of Social Welfare Services, the Cebu City Disaster Coordinating Council (CCDC) and other agencies in the task force.
For CCMC alone, the BAC approved the purchase requests for laboratory reagents, medicines, dextrose and other supplies amounting to P2.1 million. The CHD also requested for the same supplies amounting P1.9 million.
At the Department of Education (DepEd), officials responded swiftly to the council’s request for the public schools to be involved in the campaign against dengue.
DepEd 7 Regional Director Carolino Mordeno reminded all schools of the memoranda he issued last June, which pushed for the implementation of the four o’ clock clean-up habit.
He also reminded the school officials to include in their daily discussions the measures in preventing the spread of dengue and the early detection of the signs and symptoms of dengue.
“In Cebu City, we have long included that in the discussions in science, social studies and values classes, especially reminders on the need for the whole community to work together in preventing dengue, the DepEd cannot do the information campaign alone,” said City Schools Superintendent Lorna Rances.
The City Schools Division has also downloaded information materials on dengue prevention from the Internet and distributed these to the different schools. (LCR)
