I like public officials who are no-nonsense. In a recent senate session, one senator interpolated his colleague and by doing so, he was able to interject that ‘there are so many congressmen who are contractors of government projects.’ Supposedly there should be inter parliamentary courtesy in the two houses and not shaming each. No longer true today. Senator Ping Lacson addressing the Filipino public said many harsh words like, shameless, hypocrites, kapalmuks, etc. It was heaped against them but seemingly they won’t stop in their ‘evil’ ways. There is an air of frustration in the senator’s tone. Probably he had in mind the many solons in the House of Representatives na ‘walang kabusugan talaga.’
I remember writing earlier the modus operations in the biddings of government projects as detailed to me by a friend contractor. Here’s how. Formal biddings are done on offices of the agencies and presided by Bids and Awards Committee ( BAC). In most cases, the wining bidder is already known and winning bid price. That’s upon the instruction of the senator or the congressman. The arrangement is for the winning bidder to set aside three percent of the bid price of the project and equitably distributed to the participants. A certain amount is also set aside for the agency officials and personnel. The biggest slice is reserved to the director if it is in Department of Public Works and Highways. Then the district engineer and down the line that will include a corrupt Commission on Audit auditor. The reason behind why government projects are substandard.
Let me emphasize that under the procurement law, a tarpaulin which details the project must be posted on a strategic area where it will feature what is the nature of the project, starting date and completion, the amount, the CONTRACTOR, the source of funds etc. etc. This is done inorder to inform the taxpayers where their money is spent. Remember that those projects you see are not coming from private pockets of congressmen or senators. That’s yours and mine. What’s is sad people are blindly believing that we owe the solons a debt of gratitude.
This is good for retelling. There was this story about the late Senator Ramon ‘Agimat’ Revilla Sr. The old man Revilla was chairman of the Public Works committee of the Senate. He visited a government project somewhere in Bicol and immediately noticed a tarpaulin where names were printed as ‘through the efforts of etc. etc. He demanded from the district engineer to have his name included. But the engineer whispered to him: Sir, Pag nandiyan ang pangalan ninyo alam lahat ng taong bayan na pumarte kayo sa SOP. ‘Ah ganoon, Huwag na lang, Revilla retorted. End of the story. Nice one eh
