'Baguio gov't addressing projects flagged by COA'

By Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY -- The city government here is taking steps to address its long standing problem on unimplemented projects which became the subject of an audit observation memorandum by the Commission on Audit (COA) recently.
    City Administrator Bonifacio Dela Pena said they have pinpointed the cause of the problem for both the big and small projects identified for implementation and have identified steps to ensure the implementation of the projects as programmed.
    For small projects, the problem lies on the low costing of the projects identified which led to failure of bidding procedures.
Dela Pena said some of the projects identified costs from as low as P100,000 to P250,000 so that no contractors were willing to bid for them resulting in failure in bidding, not even when the city’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) resorted to negotiated bidding procedure.
    He said the city earlier tried to remedy this problem by clustering the projects but this did not work.
    To cure this, the city will attempt to consolidate these small projects and realign the amount to implement a big impact project instead.
    Dela Pena said the barangays have already agreed to this scheme and the BAC along with implementing offices City Buildings and Architecture Office, City Engineering Office and City Environment and Parks Management Office are now in the process of consolidating the unimplemented small projects.
    They will also review the costs of the small projects to make them viable.
    For high impact projects, he said there are those that can still be finished within the year but there are those that have been encountering delays in implementation.
    He said that to address this, the implementing offices have agreed with the city council to adjust the time of approval of the annual budget at an earlier date.
    This will facilitate the early bidding of these high impact projects and ensure earlier implementation.
    Dela Pena also assured that the budget allocated for all these projects is intact and was not squandered or misused.
     “The money is there.  We are just encountering some difficulties in implementing the projects but we assure you that all these funds will be used for projects they were meant for to benefit our constituents,” he said.