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Friday, April 27, 2007
CICC spending total: P537.6 million
By Karlon N. Rama
With Minerva B. Gerodias
CEBU CITY -- More than 20 contractors and suppliers were involved in the construction of the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC), documents submitted to the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas revealed.
The goods and services they delivered ran to a total of P537,613,905.98. This was chargeable to the Capitol’s megadome account of P248,759.160 and a subsequent supplemental budget of P200 million.
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The contractors were involved in 17 different transactions ranging from consultancy, landscaping, carpeting and to the construction of the structure at the Mandaue City Reclamation Area.
Businessman Crisologo Saavedra submitted the documents to the anti-graft office Thursday.
The documents consisted of purchase orders and disbursement vouchers from the Capitol, some of which were signed by Governor Gwendolyn Garcia.
He earlier asked the anti-graft office to investigate the CICC construction, alleging anomalous transactions surrounding the multi-million-peso project.
Among the alleged irregularities was the Capitol’s move to split the project implementation into more than one contract and then going into negotiated purchases in many of them.
Saavedra asked that an immediate conference be held and suggested that Governor Garcia, together with other Capitol officials, be present.
He wants the governor preventively suspended and for the anti-graft office to suspend all payments to the CICC contractors.
At the Capitol, the governor announced she will finally make a presentation on the accounting of CICC expenses on Thursday, May 3.
Comparison
Garcia said the presentation will include an inventory of the asphalting projects and this will be compared with other asphalting projects done by other government agencies.
This way, people will know the difference in prices between the Provincial Government’s projects and similar projects undertaken by other government agencies.
Editors of different local newspapers as well as columnists, including Leo Lastimosa, a vocal critic of the CICC, will be invited.
Also to be invited will be University of the Philippines Cebu College professor Cherry Ballescas, who asked during one of the Provincial Development Council meetings for an inventory of the asphalting projects the Garcia administration has done.
The Ombudsman will also be asked to send a representative and the mayors of the different towns will also be invited.
However, the governor will not invite Saavedra because for her, he is “no one” in the constructing industry. She believes Saavedra has not put up a building except houses.
Recovery
Garcia said her idea for the CICC, which she has presented during an infrastructure forum in Hong Kong, is the reimburse-operate-transfer scheme.
The investor will be asked to reimburse the Province for the amount it has spent for the construction of the CICC and, in return, the investor will operate the facility for a certain number of years and then return it to the Province after that.
This way, Garcia said the Province will be able to earn without losing the ownership of the facility, which was built for the Asean and East Asian summits last January.
According to the document Saavedra submitted, a large bulk of the Capitol funds went to the construction of the structure itself.
WT Construction billed the government a total of P119,223,995.84 for the substructure and the superstructure. The amount doesn’t cover the supply of the structural steel.
P17M fee
A total of P16.8 million went to the Guanzon Architecture and Design as fees for the detailed architectural and engineering designs, with construction supervision.
The rest of the funds went to the supply contracts for materials, equipment and labor: over P12 million for a power generator unit; P7.2 million for the elevators and escalators; P26.5 million for the air-conditioning unit; and P15.2 million for air-con ducts, among others.
The CICC has P7.9 million worth of carpets and a garden that cost P978,085.
The contractors include Kilton Motors Corp., KPI Elevators Inc., Trane Philippines, California Electronics, Gertrudes Plaza, Kima Glass Cebu Bionic Hardware and Cebu Atlantic Hardware.
Saavedra, in an earlier interview, had pointed out that the approved CICC budget was only P515 million.
Limits
But, quoting architect Manuel Guanzon, he said the project ate up some P650 million in government funds.
The additional expenditure, he said, was incurred because the project was subjected to “split bidding,” which he said 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 Acting Deputy Ombudsman Virginia Palanca-Santiago.
Saavedra said it was the negotiated bidding that made the cost of the CICC skyrocket.
If there had been a proper bidding, he said, the Provincial Government would have stayed within the budget because the winning contractor would have made sure that spending would be within the limit. (Sun.Star Cebu)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro. (April 27, 2007 issue)
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