Friday, July 04, 2008 City Hall to bid out contracts to NGOs
CEBU City Hall will now bid out contracts for projects and services previously awarded to chosen non-government organizations (NGOs), including investments promotion and programs for street children.
When before financial assistance was extended to NGOs preferred by city officials for certain services, these will now have to go through the regular bidding procedures.
City Administrator Francisco Fernandez said the bidding is in compliance with Commission on Audit (COA) Circular 2007-001, which Mayor-on-leave Tomas Osmeña opposed.
The same circular prohibits any local government unit (LGU) from extending financial aid to any NGO whose incorporator, director, organizer and officer is related to any local official involved in the processing, approving, disbursement and release of government funds.
Since COA called the City Government’s attention to the circular last March, Fernandez said they have stopped releasing financial aid to NGOs that have been helping the City with its programs.
Osmeña and some city officials are either officers of or are related to officers of the Cebu Investments Promotion Center (CIPC), Cebu City Task Force on Street Children (CCTFSC), Cebu Pistol and Rifle Association (CPRA) and the Cebu City Dancesports Team.
Fernandez said the City will still continue funding the services for street children, firearms proficiency training of the police and promoting the South Road Properties (SRP) and other investment activities, but it will be done differently this time.
“We will have to bid them out so other institutions or organizations that provide the same service or project can participate. In a way, COA is saying that there has to be competition among the NGOs. We will start advertising this to notify the public of the bidding, then it will go through the regular bidding process,” he told Sun.Star Cebu.
Prohibition
This way, he said, the City can still provide the service or programs to certain sectors without violating the provision of the circular that prohibits financial aid to NGOs whose officers are related to city officials.
“Because we’re not allowed to give a grant to the CPRA, we will give it to them not as an NGO grant but as a service contract. But this will be disadvantageous to the
City because if it were an NGO grant, the NGO would be mandated to put in a 25 percent counterpart fund,” he continued.
Fernandez said, though, that instead of being very strict with the NGOs, COA should be more flexible with them because it could mean extra savings on the part of the City for some projects.
In an interview yesterday, the city administrator said he is still hopeful that COA will revisit the circular approved in October last year, as promised.
There is still a possibility that the winning bid would be an NGO that has officers who are related to some city officials who are members of the bids and awards
committee or the City Council, the bodies that will approve the contract.
In a phone interview yesterday, CIPC managing director Joel Mari Yu said the bidding of services previously awarded to chosen NGOs might be possible, but other organizations might not meet the requirements.
CIPC has been handling the promotion of the multi-billion SRP since 1995.
“I think that technically, bidding out the contract is possible but practically, how can anybody beat us? We have 15 years of track record and the others, what will they show in terms of track record? I’d like to think that we are not responsible for all investments here but for the bigger ones, we were the ones who brought them in,” Yu added. (LCR)
