THE Cebu City Council has questioned the ongoing construction works at the Cebu City Medical Center’s (CCMC) eighth to 10th floors under Dakay Construction and Development Corp., despite no contract being awarded to any contractor.
The City Council also questioned the lack of a tripartite agreement for the donated funds for the construction of CCMC’s eighth to 10th floors due to potential violations of the law.
The Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) was slapped with a confusing timetable for all civil works and budget allocation at the CCMC over the decade.
In an executive session on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, City Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos questioned why there were construction activities in CCMC.
She said that there should be no ongoing civil works at the hospital, particularly since the last contract at the said facility was terminated last year, and there should be no bidding or awarding of a new contract.
De los Santos asked Robert Bo Varquez, project director of CCMC’s eighth to 10th floors, if there was any ongoing work at the CCMC, but the latter said that there was none.
Varquez was designated by now-suspended Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama to manage the construction of CCMC’s last three floors.
He said that there is an ongoing redesign of the eighth, ninth, and 10th floors from the original design, in which he added that the ward rooms were prioritized in the new design instead of private rooms in the old plan.
He added that the new design plan will be submitted to the DEPW and then will be forwarded to the City Council for approval before the start of the civil works.
Varquez said the selected contractor for the completion of the structural framework of the eighth to 10th floors was Dakay Construction.
For the finishing works, Varquez said that there are already commitments for the completion of the last three floors, but he did not elaborate as to from whom these commitments are coming.
He added that the project is still in the preparatory phase.
He also clarified that the estimated cost of the eighth to 10th floors was not yet determined, pending the completion of the new design.
Varquez added that the only civil work ongoing at CCMC was on the seventh floor of Operation Smile, for which the latter has already shouldered the expenses based on an earlier memorandum of agreement with the Cebu City Government.
Later on, the city councilor asked DEPW Acting City Engineer Lowell Corminal if there were ongoing works, and the latter confirmed.
De los Santos responded that it contrasts with the earlier statement of Varquez.
City Councilor Nestor Archival then questioned Corminal as to who the contractor was and why there was ongoing work despite the absence of a contract.
Corminal answered that it was Dakay Construction, in which he explained that the contractor was only setting up the tower crane, chipping the concrete cover for the columns, and doing other preparatory works during the construction of the eighth to 10th floors.
However, Archival argued that there should never be any work activities in the hospital as there was no contract awarded as of the moment to Dakay Construction or any contractor.
Archival recalled that there were several projects in City Hall that the DEPW has awarded to several contractors without the required bidding process.
Donation
De los Santos, on the other hand, questioned CCMC Medical Director Dr. Peter Mancao as to why the funds from the private donors were downloaded to the Cebu Medical Society (CMS) and not to the City Treasurer’s Officer.
Mancao said that an amount of P205 million has already been received by the CMS, adding that it will not be disbursed until a trust fund agreement is reached between the CMS, the private donors, and the Cebu City Government.
He added that private donations directly downloaded to CMS will streamline transparency in the disbursement of funds.
The private donations were to be used for the construction of the structure framework of the CCMC’s eighth to 10th floors.
Earlier, Mancao revealed to SunStar Cebu that the selected contractor to build the last three floors of the CCMC was Dakay Construction.
However, de los Santos told Mancao that at the moment the fund was received, the agreement was supposed to be finalized and signed.
De los Santos said that under City Ordinance 2439, which provides guidelines on accepting donations, documentation, including the receipt, must be accounted for.
She added that CMS receiving the funds and not directly from the city’s treasurer posed questions as to the transparency of the funds.
Mancao said the agreement is still in progress, and he added that receiving the donation from the private donors was done in good faith.
De los Santos argued that back in December 2023, Rama announced the completion of the CCMC’s eighth, ninth, and 10th floors would be done through pledges from donors without disbursing public funds.
She added that Rama revealed that there were P1 billion in available funds as pledges from the private sector.
In 2023, Rama sought investments from the private sector in Metro Manila to finish the CCMC.
Due to delays, de los Santos asked for transparency and the whereabouts of the P1 billion pledges.
With Mancao unable to answer de los Santos’s questions, Archival then suggested that it should be Rama who should explain why there was no agreement made after the funding from private donors was received.
Meanwhile, Corminal told the council that the DEPW has already incurred a total of P1.138 billion in all civil works at CCMC.
He said that there have been at least five phases of CCMC’s construction since 2014, with Phase 1 (P566 million); Phase 1.1 (P36 million); Phase 2 (P299 million); Phase 3 (P99 million) and Phase 4 (P136 million was disbursed out of the P916 million contract).
However, DEPW is preparing for the rebidding of the termination of Phase 4, which will now be called Phase 5, in which City Hall has allocated almost P700 million for the finishing works on the fourth floor to the sixth floor of the CCMC.
Acting Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia earlier said that the P700 million budget was “savings” under Phase 4 of the terminated contract with M.E. Sicat Construction in November 2022 due to delays.
However, with the pending tripartite agreement regarding the P200 million donation and the pending scope of works on the last three floors, de Los Santos urged Garcia and the DEPW to first defer the bidding process for the P700 million.
She explained that there should be a clear threshold as to the scope of all civil works in the completion of the CCMC to be presented to the council. /EHP