CH probe team: Tom's admin a party to blame

CEBU, Philippines - The administration of then Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is also a party to blame for the alleged anomalous barangay projects which the south district congressman himself earlier complained.

A fact-finding team created by the City Hall to look into the substandard barangay projects under the Community Micro Assistance Program (CMAP) during Osmeña’s administration reported that there was no proper evaluation and determination of the capability of the beneficiaries to handle the funds and implement the projects that they wanted to undertake in their areas.

The team headed by City Legal Officer Joseph Bernaldez however failed to unmask the people responsible in the alleged manipulation to favor E.M Arante Construction which cornered more than 70 infrastructure projects in several barangays worth P156 million.

During Osmeña’s stint at the City Hall, the city had allocated P200 million for CMAP in the form of aid to the barangays, particularly in the south district.

But according to the probe team, the funds were given to the barangays without prior evaluation to determine their capability to undertake projects.

Bernaldez said the records show that it was the first time that barangays were made to implement their respective infrastructure projects.

“Their lack of capability is evidenced by the fact that a good number of the projects under the program were awarded to and contracted only by one particular contractor,” Bernaldez said.

According to the fact-finding team, there was no proper system of monitoring and supervision prior to the transfer of funds to the barangay.

The team of technical experts from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Manila that Osmeña requested to inspect the projects had confirmed that most of the projects undertaken by the Arante Construction were sub-standard.

The DPWH findings even resulted to Osmeña’s severing his friendship with then Association of Barangay Councils president Eugenio “Jingjing” Faelnar.

Osmeña believes that Faelnar was behind the favor given to Arante Construction.

It was found out that while Arante had more than 70 projects in different barangays it only has 72 workers.

“Without the requisite technical personnel to handle the supervision and monitoring of the projects in terms of compliance of plans and specifications, the barangay projects are bound to suffer defects and deficiencies,” the report said.

Osmeña defended his administration saying he had exercised extra precaution in implementing the program.

Osmeña said he even went out of his way to sign memorandum of agreements with the barangays that are involved in the projects even if it is not required.

“I exercised extra precaution to protect public funds and I cracked down the minute I heard of an anomaly of projects in Kalunasan and immediately expanded the investigation city-wide and stopped payments to Arante. No bias for political allies,” Osmeña said.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama, who concurred the team’s findings, said that since the investigating team does not have coersive powers to compel the barangay officials and some other persons that they want to be investigated, they referred the matter before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for further investigation.

“The possible involvement of some officials and personnel in the bidding process which resulted to the awarding of the majority of the barangay projects to one and the same contractor may be further investigated by a proper body with more coersive, subpoena or even contempt powers in order to ferret out the truth that had been restrained during the investigation due to the team’s inherent limitations,” Rama said.

The barangay officials who appeared before the probe team admitted that they do not have enough knowledge about the new procurement law that is why they only posted the notices of bid for the projects right at their respective barangay halls, instead of having it published on newspapers.   - (THE FREEMAN)