Monday, April 02, 2007 Probe of lamps deal whistle-blower sought
A CONTRACTOR of the multimillion-peso worth of lampposts used in the past Association of Southeast Asian (Asean) summit held in Cebu in January asked the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate the culpability of the Pelican Bay Group headed by its project manager, Crisologo Saavedra, for its failure to deliver 40 sets of security camera amounting to P79.9 million.
Engineer Dante Valencia, general manager of Gampik, said the failure of Saavedra to deliver the security cameras placed at risk the more than 3,000 Asean summit delegates.
"Being the host country, the non-delivery of cameras endangered the safety and security of the more than 3,000 Asean summit delegates. It could have been another black eye for the Philippines if any assassination attempts, terrorist attacks and similar violent incidents took place," Valencia said.
Valencia said Saavedra's selfish actions should prompt the Ombudsman to investigate his culpability.
"Instead of being treated as a whistle-blower on the pretext of being a concerned citizen, Saavedra should be the one to be put on trial to expose his anomalous transactions. The Office of the Ombudsman should immediately conduct an impartial, transparent, fair, just and neutral investigation on Saavedra's anomalous, deceptive and baseless accusations and lies to hide his involvement in the multimillion-peso plunder," he said.
Valencia said it is not enough that the government merely terminated the contract and awarded it to the Pelican.
He claimed that Saavedra, who earlier exposed that the lampposts were overpriced, concocted such a story to divert the attention from the anomaly that he committed.
According to him, Saavedra also misrepresented himself by using two companies to circumvent the strict and standard requirement of Republic Act (RA) 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act.
"Upon termination of Saavedra's contract because of non-delivery of security items required, the government failed to seize, garnish and confiscate his performance bond" he said.
Valencia recalled that the national organizing committee composed of the local government units (LGUs) in Cebu with the coordination of the public works and budget departments and Office of the President was created in September last year to supervise the bidding process for the installation of the Traffic Surveillance Equipment (TSE) and lampposts outside the Cebu International Convention Center (Cicc).
He said the Pelican, Wireless Technology Network and Triton Communications Corporation joined the pre-qualification bidding for the surveillance cameras.
"During the evaluation of the bidders in the pre-qualification bidding, Wireless and Triton were declared non-compliant while the Pelican was declared non-eligible for the contract due to its lack of track record. After having been declared as non-eligible, the Pelican filed a motion for reconsideration that was questionably accepted by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)," Valencia said.
Valencia said under the contract awarded to Pelican, Saavedra's company will be given 30 percent downpayment for the P79.9 million contracts for the installation of TSE and full payment will be made after installation and the deadline for them to complete the project was set on November 26 last year.
"But the deadline was not complied with by Pelican. So, the contract was terminated for Pelican's failure to deliver on time. Then, the DPWH reopened the bid proposal of the Triton. The Triton performed, delivered and installed TSE in 10 days," he said. (AH/Sunnex)
