Bidding of contracts ‘rigged’ for favored contractors: Graft charges filed vs 7 Teachers Camp execs

BAGUIO CITY – Graft charges were filed last week before the Ombudsman’s Office against seven officials of Teacher’s Camp here for allegedly rigging the bidding of seven contract projects to improve the camp worth P31 million.

The officials, all members of the bids, awards committee were identified in the affidavit-complaint as Lovenia Gorospe, Clemente Salinas Jr., Mercedes Bautista, Yolanda Pascua, Pedrito Pilien, Marjorie Turalba and Roland Castillo.

Also included in the complaint were project consultants Ric Aquino, a certain architect Sac and their head Jonathan Malaya.

Contractor Richard Yodong of Salidummay General Const., in his complaint, said he won the bidding but the projects were unduly awarded to other contractors reportedly in cahoots with Teachers’ Camp officials.

“The unlawful disregard by the BAC of the law in allowing non-complying bidders who failed to comply due to their own fault, to participate in the final bidding is a blatant violation which should be duly penalized,” Yodong said.

The other bidders were identified as Nicholas Jift, Eastern Construction Co., MKM Enterprises, Le Bron and Ampilan Enterprises.

“Aside from utter disregard of rules and laws by members of the BAC, there appears a clear maneuver to deny SGC of the lawful award of all the projects where it was able to sufficiently comply with the bid requirements,” he added.

“The obvious scheme of the BAC to deny and weed out SGC from winning the awards,” Yodong said, “further manifest the irregularities and unjustifiable decisions of the BAC together with consultants Aquino and Sac. The unclear and unreasonable explanations of the BAC in its resolution are vain efforts to cover an unlawful conspiracy among them.”

According to Yodong, it was through the website of the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) where all government projects are required to be published for bidding that he came to know about projects.

A pre-bid conference was reportedly held at the camp on Feb. 29 and the bidding was closed on March 12.

“During opening of the bids, Le Bron was declared as “non-complying” by the BAC because of insufficiency of bid security while Nicholas Jift, MKM Enterprises and Eastern Co., were declared as non-complying because of their failure to comply with requirements under the law,” Yodong said. “Bid securities submitted by these bidders did not comply with documents required by law and the instruction to bidders and were thus declared as failed or non-complying.”

Despite this, the BAC reportedly entertained a motion for reconsideration from the “failed and non-complying bidders which is against the law.”

On March 13, Yodong said he went to Teachers Camp and was surprised when he was told that the other bidders were considered “complying bidders despite their utter failure to abide with the provisions of the law and instructions to bidders.”

“I pursued my inquiry on the result of the bidding but I was told by Gorospe that I should just wait for the written notice to reach me,” Yodong said. “On March 25, I wrote a letter to DepEd Assistant Secretary Jonathan Malaya inquiring on the results of the bidding since I heard that I was disqualified from the BAC secretariat and BAC chairman herself. When I received the notices on April 8, which is way beyond the period within which to receive such notices as required by law, I learned that that the said contractors were awarded the projects.”

Yodong added: “I also learned that the said contractors started their work as early as March 17, 2008 without the benefit of valid contract papers. All the bidders, except Salidummay General Const., were earlier found to have failed to comply with the rule on bid security. The bid should have been automatically granted to SGC. But because of the irregular and unlawful decisions of the BAC, these were awarded to non-complying bidders.”

He said it was also a surprise that SGC was listed as non-complying when it has complied with all required documents.

Yodong said he would pursue the case he filed against the respondents to teach them a lesson in good governance